If you would report an undocumented immigrant to ICE you would have reported me to the Nazis and I donât fucking trust you
A note:
I live in a state where you âhave toâ report anyone you suspect of being undocumented (that wonderful hellhole of Arizona). Now in practice this law has fallen far short, thank goodness. But if you live in such a place and they start enforcing it, here is how you get around it:
Assume everyone who doesnât speak English is visiting.
Never ask about their job, because if they tell you they work here then you know theyâre not visiting. You see them a lot for several weeks or months? Hm. Someone in the family must be ill. Thatâs terribly tough. They always dress in old, ratty laborersâ clothes? I feel you, my dude, I canât afford new clothes either, and my dad has the fashion sense of an aardvark, so sometimes itâs not even about âaffordingâ them. They say theyâve been here for years? You must have misunderstood. Spanish isnât your first language, after all. First and last name? It never came up, or you donât recallâyou meet a lot of people.
And then, if youâre asked: no, you havenât seen anyone residing illegally in the United States. Just people visiting.
As of July 4th 2018, the Internet as we know it might be dead for good.Â
The European Parliament is passing a new Copyright Directive. Article 13 #CensorshipMachine will impose widespread censorship of all the content we share online. Art, fanfiction, parodies, remixes, mashups, memes, etc.. Anything that you do not hold the rights over will be taken down.Â
Article 13 would force all online platforms to police and prevent the uploading of copyrighted content, or make people seek the correct licenses to post that content. Internet platforms hosting large amounts of user-uploaded content must monitor user behaviour and filter their contributions to identify and prevent copyright infringement.Â
Such filters will be mandatory for platforms including YouTube, Facebook, Tumblr, Reddit and Instagram, but also much smaller websites.Â
Last Tuesday (19th June 2018) a group of more than 70 people who have played important roles in building the internet and developing it (Tim Berners-Lee, Vincent Cerf,
Jimmy Wales, Mitchell BakerâŠ) into what it is today addressed an open letter to the members of the European Parliament:
âAs creators ourselves, we share the concern that there should be a fair distribution of revenues from the online use of copyright works, that benefits creators, publishers, and platforms alike.
But Article 13 is not the right way to achieve this. By requiring Internet platforms to perform automatic filtering all of the content that their users upload, Article 13 takes an unprecedented step towards the transformation of the Internet from an open platform for sharing and innovation, into a tool for the automated surveillance and control of its users. [âŠ] The damage that this may do to the free and open Internet as we know it is hard to predict, but in our opinions could be substantial.â