The Culture War - Tim Pool - The Culture War #5 - Tim Pool, Bill Ottman SUE California, MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT

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00:00:57.060 We're suing California because we're culture warriors, I guess. Welcome to the show,

00:01:02.220 everybody. What's going on, guys? Who are you? What are you doing?

00:01:06.020 Hey, good morning. James Lawrence with Envisage Law. I'm a partner there. I'm an attorney.

00:01:12.100 Yeah, I'm Bill Ottman, founder of Minds.com. And yeah, we're suing California over a censorship law.

00:01:18.240 So Bill Ottman, you guys probably know, many of you may know because he's the founder of Minds.com,

00:01:25.300 which is a very large social media platform that we use and a lot of people have used. And it's got

00:01:30.640 a cryptocurrency involved, but also you've been on the show a bunch talking about censorship and

00:01:34.100 other stuff like that. And then this lawyer fellow over here, very successful in fighting

00:01:40.360 against unjust censorship. You want to give a quick context as to your past victories?

00:01:44.180 Yeah, thanks. So I had the opportunity to represent Alex Berenson in his path-breaking

00:01:52.340 case against Twitter. It's the first case that I'm aware of where a de-platform user of any social

00:02:01.140 media platform successfully sued a platform and got reinstated. And that happened in July of last year.

00:02:11.440 So I do a number of other things. Currently, I also represent Jamie Rogozinski in his lawsuit

00:02:18.800 against, who's the founder of WallStreetBets, in his lawsuit against Reddit for his de-platforming

00:02:25.280 from that website as well.

00:02:28.040 Yeah, how come these tech companies are such, I'll try to avoid swearing, but why are they such

00:02:31.760 bad people, you know?

00:02:32.980 I mean, the ideology has seeped into the terms of service.

00:02:38.540 I don't know. I kind of feel like a lot of it may be ideological, like maybe with Twitter

00:02:45.100 and Twitter's past leadership. But a lot of it seems to be just parasitic leeching. You know,

00:02:51.840 like these companies just want to make money, don't care, plow through whatever gets in their

00:02:56.400 way. You know what I mean?

00:02:58.580 It seems like they're alienating a huge percentage of the population and it would arguably be

00:03:03.880 bad for business in certain sense. I mean, you are constantly talking about get woke,

00:03:07.380 go broke. I mean...

00:03:08.740 Yeah. But I wonder if they're looking at it like, we'll lose X dollars if we do this,

00:03:14.780 we'll lose X plus Y dollars if we don't. So we may as well just accept the loss and then

00:03:20.600 just plow through or something. But anyway, let's talk about what's going on. So I guess the big

00:03:24.760 news, especially for this show we're doing, is that California has a law, which is... I'm going

00:03:31.480 to avoid swearing for now, because YouTube's got rules where it's like, don't swear in the first

00:03:35.080 minute or something. So we'll keep the swearing to a minimum for the time being. But it's BS.

00:03:40.740 It basically is literally putting pressure on these companies to effectively censor,

00:03:46.860 create unjust policies. I think it outright violates the First Amendment. So that's the news.

00:03:53.900 We're suing California, okay, to fight censorship. Let's start with this, and then we'll get into

00:04:02.500 the bigger picture with all the tech stuff. So what's this law and why are we suing?

00:04:07.040 Yeah. So I'll just give the audience an overview. So this statute, AB 587, was passed by the California

00:04:15.400 legislature. And it really does two things. One, it imposes a requirement on covered platforms,

00:04:24.860 which would include, at the very least, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, among others. But it

00:04:33.860 imposes a requirement on those platforms to have terms of service that require content moderation at

00:04:42.440 some level. Okay. That's point one. Point two is the law requires these platforms to submit periodic

00:04:53.040 reports to the California Attorney General's office regarding actions that the platforms have taken

00:05:01.580 to police several categories of content, including, among others, hate speech and racism, misinformation and

00:05:12.200 disinformation, and extremism and radicalization. Those are terms in the statute that are undefined

00:05:20.980 and aren't anchored to any kind of basis for the regulated parties to understand what their obligations

00:05:31.200 are under the statute, which is highly problematic. But to your point, Tim, the statute also has the effect

00:05:40.460 of incentivizing these platforms to engage in censorship across these various categories. Because

00:05:47.580 as Governor Newsom announced in his signing statement, with respect to the law, the aim of it is to

00:05:56.280 prevent or to have the state of California say, hate doesn't have a home here. And that has troubling

00:06:06.760 speech implications. And those are problems. It's an overt and very obvious First Amendment

00:06:11.620 violation. It's, it's, yes. And, and, and, and, and again, the end game, if you want to kind of look

00:06:20.580 more broadly, is there are going to be certain platforms that are going to submit reporting to

00:06:27.320 the Attorney General of California that are going to be good corporate citizens, they're going to be

00:06:31.100 taking action across these various categories, perhaps in sufficient number and quantity and timing.

00:06:38.780 And then there are going to be other platforms, perhaps that are lagging. And the, the end game

00:06:45.460 there is to what we've already seen, right, with respect to the reforms that Elon Musk has tried to

00:06:51.540 make on Twitter, an attempt to paint those that aren't taking an aggressive approach, approach to

00:06:58.280 these issues as pariahs, and as problems and as hotbeds of fill in the blank, hatred, misinformation,

00:07:04.860 and so on. When did this law pass? It was passed last year, and its provisions went into effect on

00:07:11.240 January 1st of this year. And the reporting requirement will kick in, in January 1st of

00:07:15.540 2024. But of course, the regulated entities are going to have to start taking steps now,

00:07:21.120 spending money to, to, to, to, and again, we're not against moderation. Like we're open to, you know,

00:07:26.800 we try to have a First Amendment aligned content policy. And the reality is that disinformation,

00:07:31.000 misinformation, misinformation, hate, extremism. I mean, extremism about what? You, you could be an

00:07:35.920 extreme skater. You could be like, you can't put the word extremism with no definition in a law.

00:07:42.500 And so one way to go about is just to only ever report Antifa and be like, here's what we've done.

00:07:46.460 Here's the far left. Here's what they're doing. And they're going to be like, oh, well, what about

00:07:49.980 these other groups? What other groups? And be like, oh, you know, we don't consider that to be

00:07:53.780 extremism. You know, like the, cause they're going to try, they try and claim that like libertarians are far

00:07:59.520 right or whatever, you know? No, that's not extremism. We, we, I mean, if you can define it

00:08:04.300 yourself, but I think the obvious thing is that when the government intervenes and tells a private

00:08:08.800 business to regulate speech or create pressures that will result in any kind of speech regulation,

00:08:15.100 that is just like plainly. And I don't understand how they thought this would fly in the first place.

00:08:21.100 I kind of feel like this is a rubber stamp lawsuit. I mean, like they'll try and fight it. Of course,

00:08:26.060 it's California. They may get a favorable judge, but I mean, when can the government be like we

00:08:32.400 hereby impose speech regulations on corporations? That's just a violation of the first amendment

00:08:36.900 plainly and obviously. Well, to your point, I mean, a, a court in New York, a federal district

00:08:41.360 court in New York enjoined New York's law, which is similar in some ways, which required reporting

00:08:49.020 regarding, uh, platforms and, and define platforms very, very broadly in that, in that case, who, um,

00:08:57.080 for needing to take action against hateful conduct, which they defined as among other things,

00:09:02.820 inciting violence against protected categories of people. And of course, we've seen how, um,

00:09:10.800 that rhetoric has been used in the context of stochastic terrorism, which is a concept that carried

00:09:18.920 to its logical conclusion would mean the end of free speech in America and also the end of freedom

00:09:23.200 of the press. And at least they defined hate in the, in the New York law. They're not even defining

00:09:28.580 any of these words at all in the California, which is, it's honestly lazy of them to have not done that.

00:09:35.180 But you're, you're right. There's, there aren't any definitions of these, these arguably very

00:09:39.680 ambiguous terms, but nothing is ambiguous about the potential consequences of violating the statute,

00:09:47.400 which are fines that could amount up to $15,000 a day. If the, the platforms that are at issue do

00:09:56.200 not comply and do not bend the knee to the censorship regime. The reporting is extreme too. Like they want

00:10:03.460 number, you know, clear analytics of all the reports of hate misinformation, like, like these are

00:10:09.760 extensive data sets that are required, you know, multiple times a year. That's right. So, so it's a

00:10:16.400 major cost on the business too. Yeah, absolutely. Just take, take the speech issue out of it. It's a,

00:10:22.420 it's a burdensome regulation on private businesses who are now going to have to hire employees and,

00:10:31.920 uh, and, and, and, and get staff together to, to Bill's point to create reporting on ambiguous

00:10:39.380 terms, even if they could do the work. And it would be one thing if this law was just saying,

00:10:43.680 listen, you have to have terms of service and you have to, you know, report it once in a while,

00:10:48.520 but they chose to pick these six words or how that happened. Like it's, they're arbitrary. I mean,

00:10:54.100 they're, well, they're very specifically chosen words, but they don't want, why don't they choose

00:10:58.580 other words? Why don't they choose, um, drug, drugs, illegal drugs? Like there's so many other

00:11:04.020 categories of content that they could have. Because it's political. It's political. You know,

00:11:07.620 you know, what has me worried is that conversations like this are particularly esoteric, hard for the

00:11:13.060 average person to follow. It's easy to, it's easy when you see a video on TikTok of some like,

00:11:18.400 you know, woman in a gym complaining about men and be like, Hey, here's a cultural issue.

00:11:22.980 This weird, like here's an, here's a, uh, an artifact of the culture war. You got these stories

00:11:29.500 where these women are in gyms and they're like, excuse me, are you looking at me? And like the 1.00

00:11:32.860 guys are like, what? And then the woman drops the barbell or whatever on her foot and she's 0.99

00:11:36.280 screaming and then everyone laughs, you know, stories like that. Or there's one that went viral

00:11:39.240 where this woman got kicked out. Those are so easy for the average person to understand. Like, Hey,

00:11:44.560 there's something clearly wrong with the way our culture is developing, but stuff like this is

00:11:48.500 extremely hard to understand. Most people don't even know what happened. And this will probably have one of

00:11:52.340 the biggest, if not the biggest impact on whether or not you can even talk about the other issues.

00:11:56.440 So the difficulty here is how do we get a message like this? Like, Hey guys, California is trying to

00:12:02.100 do one of the most egregious violations of the first amendment we've seen in decades or more.

00:12:07.740 And we need people to understand and care about this element of the culture war fight.

00:12:12.540 I mean, seeing the Newsom and others in California, you know, their rhetoric about hate is alarming.

00:12:19.840 Like that is a cultural media artifact that is kind of, can you explain that? What specifically what

00:12:25.520 they both said and, and who, and, and, uh, explain Banta. So, so yeah, uh, Attorney General Banta

00:12:33.640 is the chief and law enforcement officer of the state of California. And it is to his office that these

00:12:40.680 reports have to be, have to be made, uh, to your, to your, your, your question about hate. Yeah. I mean,

00:12:48.180 the, the, the governor, I think was very candid in the way he described the effect of this law and the goal

00:12:56.480 of this law. It is not merely to provide consumers with more transparency about how decision-making is

00:13:04.260 done within these platforms. It is about, um, curbing the spread of, of hate in California and the state of

00:13:12.360 California taking, uh, uh, a stand against hate, which again is an, is an undefined term. I mean,

00:13:17.480 even legislators who supported this measure were out in front of the press with, with, uh, terms like

00:13:26.660 stop hate blazoned on front of the podiums that they were standing behind. Uh, so it's weaponized.

00:13:34.200 They're weaponizing the word hate. Right. And, and, and, and to return to Bill's point,

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00:15:03.200 Did I mention that we care?

00:15:04.540 We mentioned the categories and there are, as he pointed out, some notable omissions. I mean,

00:15:13.080 child pornography, for example, is not listed in this laundry list.

00:15:19.640 Well, that's actually not surprising at all. You don't need a policy against that.

00:15:22.480 You don't need a policy against that.

00:15:25.200 But you better not say naughty words.

00:15:26.520 But again, misinformation and disinformation. And we've seen, right, we have seen the way

00:15:33.320 that those two terms in particular have been weaponized against political and ideological

00:15:39.940 enemies in this country. And that is why this effort, among others, is so important to draw

00:15:45.940 a line in the sand and say, no further. We're not going down this road.

00:15:50.280 So we're suing. We're going to put our money where our mouth is. And we're challenging this.

00:15:56.740 So I'm glad to be a part of it, obviously, because we've got to do more than just complain

00:16:02.320 about it on the Internet. We're complaining about it now, but we're also letting you guys

00:16:05.340 know, like, we're taking action. So then the big question people are probably asking is,

00:16:09.760 what do we want? What do we win if we win?

00:16:12.840 Yeah, what we will be asking for is an injunction from the court that will enjoin the attorney

00:16:20.860 general's office and the other responsible state actors in California from enforcing this.

00:16:27.320 And that will be the relief that we will seek in the litigation.

00:16:32.700 So there's an interesting view, right? So we've got Bill here who runs a big social media platform,

00:16:37.500 and then you've got me who produces content like this for social media platforms.

00:16:40.940 And there's a few big issues. One, I mean, you guys at Mines will be directly impacted because

00:16:47.240 the law targets you. For me as the producer, I will be directly impacted because it indirectly

00:16:52.320 targets me, because now what's going to happen is these companies are going to be like, well,

00:16:56.520 it's ill-defined. But look, if Newsom is threatening some kind of fine, unless we take action against

00:17:02.140 their political rivals, it's, it's, it's, I'll put it this way. I remember talking to the guys

00:17:07.240 at Patreon. They had suspended some dude, terminated his account, destroyed his income.

00:17:12.940 And the CEO was like, Tim, if I don't ban this one guy, hundreds of thousands of people lose their

00:17:19.420 jobs. Or it was like tens of thousands of people lose their jobs. If we don't comply with this

00:17:24.880 regulation and we, and this guy is a lot on the platform, everyone loses their account. So the,

00:17:30.320 the idea is I hate to do it, but I got to ban this one guy to save the 99 guys.

00:17:35.780 You specifically spoke with Conte?

00:17:37.580 This was years ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Years ago. This was, um, because he had banned,

00:17:42.940 uh, who was, who was banned first? Was it Lauren Southern? I think Lauren Southern was banned first. 1.00

00:17:47.220 And then we were like, yo, like to, to abruptly destroy someone's income. And, uh, so this was

00:17:53.800 around the time Lauren Southern had gotten on a boat and she was like waving a flare in the air 0.99

00:17:57.660 at one of these migrant, uh, human smuggling ships. The right, the left tries to call them refugee

00:18:02.740 ships. But like when a boat goes to another country and picks people up and brings them

00:18:06.260 back, they're just trafficking. So, um, but then they were like, because of that, they were

00:18:10.640 terminating her account or something. They didn't give her any notice. So all of a sudden her income's

00:18:14.060 gone. And they were like, well, you know, too bad, but it caused a huge backlash. Patreon then

00:18:18.860 was then, was then like, okay, we'll never do this again. We'll always make sure to give notice.

00:18:23.280 Then someone dug up like a year old podcast and a tiny channel from Carl Benjamin. Also, uh,

00:18:28.580 he runs the Lotus Eaters podcast and he was using a racial slur against racists. Basically the idea

00:18:35.480 was I'm going to call you what you call them, see how you like it. And they went up, up, up, up.

00:18:39.600 Doesn't matter. He was a slur. Not on Patron's platform. Yeah. Off. Both were off platform.

00:18:44.620 Both were off platform. And, uh, Carl's video was from a year ago. It got a few thousand views.

00:18:49.480 It was on YouTube, not on Patron. They banned him anyway. And so this caused a major backlash and,

00:18:54.580 and a bunch of large creators left. Jordan Peterson, I think had left. I don't know if he was on

00:18:58.320 Sam Harris. I mean, Sam Harris defended Carl. Right. Like talk about La La Land when we talk

00:19:02.640 about Sam Harris now. Right. Uh, he defended Carl. He leaves the platform. I ended up talking with the

00:19:08.000 CEO and he was basically saying, because there was another issue where this guy, Robert Spencer,

00:19:13.820 had his account deleted. And they said it was, it was reportedly, I think Patron said this

00:19:18.020 MasterCard went to them and said, we will not handle transactions from you unless you get rid of

00:19:24.380 this guy. And so the, the mentality from, from Conti, from the CEO was, you know, if I've got

00:19:30.480 30,000 people who make a living on this platform and they all rely on it and we have to get rid of

00:19:35.900 one guy. And if we don't 30,000 people lose their income, I have no choice. My response was stop being

00:19:42.920 a fucking pathetic coward and call their bluff. Tell them MasterCard. I would like to see how you handle 1.00

00:19:51.820 30,000 unemployed, famous people, celebrities, influencers, all of the people with millions of

00:20:01.220 followers each waking up one day to find they have no revenue anymore. And it's your fault.

00:20:05.660 Make my fucking day. And the coward at Patron said, but I don't want to do it. So he did nothing. 1.00

00:20:12.460 So excuse me, my attitude with all this is you got to stand up. You got to call them out. If,

00:20:18.680 if, if Twitter, if Facebook, if these platforms are presented with this law, they're going to say,

00:20:24.760 look, we really don't want to ban Tim Pool, but if we've got to ban one guy to save a hundred

00:20:30.400 thousand, well then we're going to have to do it. So fuck that fire away. Let's get this lawsuit done 1.00

00:20:36.580 and stop them from being able to do that. And how did the Patreon lawsuit end up? Because they did get,

00:20:41.140 there was, there was a complaint against them, right? Well, there was the Owen Benjamin thing. I don't,

00:20:44.120 I don't remember exactly what happened. That was crazy because the mass arbitration was

00:20:48.440 potentially going to bankrupt the company. I don't know where they went with that. I just know that

00:20:52.620 that's the mentality of these companies. I mean, the reality was Jack Conte had all the leverage in

00:20:56.920 the world. He could have, he could have gotten the phone with MasterCard and been like, you done fucked 1.00

00:21:01.160 up boy, because I got, I'm going to make a phone call to one, one of our top podcasts that bring in 0.98

00:21:09.180 a hundred K per month that have 10 million subscribers. And I'm going to say, Hey, you

00:21:14.620 are about to get banned because a MasterCard is threatening to pull the plug on the platform.

00:21:18.180 Why don't you make a video explaining it? Here's the paperwork they sent us. That one guy makes one

00:21:23.100 video. It ripples across the entire internet. And in two seconds, MasterCard's lost 10% market share

00:21:28.780 make my day. But these people are all cowards. None of them do it. At least we got Bill Ottman, 1.00

00:21:33.480 CEO of mines being like, I will sue, you know, and, and me as just one crater being like,

00:21:37.820 I will also sue. So I, we may be the little guy in this David versus a Goliath, but let's,

00:21:41.900 let's fucking do it. I mean, changing policies is our only tool. 0.96

00:21:45.500 Guys, it's not our only tool, but it's a primary.

00:21:47.820 Where's Ian Musk in this? I mean, it's been, it's been what, when was this bill passed?

00:21:51.480 Almost a year ago?

00:21:52.180 Yeah. And, and I think it was passed before he took ownership of Twitter. I, you know, I,

00:21:59.740 to your question, I don't know what his position is on this bill or if he is even aware of it.

00:22:05.860 Maybe he doesn't know.

00:22:06.540 Yeah. Hopefully this will make him aware.

00:22:07.860 Well, yeah, I guess we will see. But to your point, Tim, I mean, yeah, it takes, it takes

00:22:13.180 tenacity. It takes fortitude. It takes courage to, to stand up and really do the right thing. And

00:22:19.000 that's what this is. It's doing the right thing. It's speaking truth to power in California and

00:22:28.380 standing up for free speech in the first amendment.

00:22:31.260 You know, we're, we're a media company here at Timcast. We have a bunch of paying members who

00:22:35.820 help support the work to produce media, but I'm almost feeling like we're on the verge of needing

00:22:40.760 to be an activist organization because it's one thing if we can spread the word to a large audience

00:22:45.800 and let them know about the problem. But knowing is just the first step. If we have tens of thousands

00:22:52.640 of, of active participants in the stuff that we're doing and we create an activist component,

00:22:57.840 something like this, that's 100 times more effective. You know, what do we, you know, 50,

00:23:04.920 60 million views per month across our network, mostly on just the content we, I produce for

00:23:09.960 Timcast and then to a small degree, the other stuff that goes a long way in, in running a

00:23:15.220 business. But, uh, what if we were to take those viewers and then also create some kind

00:23:19.720 of active element to it, like stand up for what you believe in, that would have a powerful

00:23:25.040 impact. You look at these leftist organizations that are way smaller, a thousand people making

00:23:29.120 phone calls and all of a sudden they're changing policy and they're banning people from,

00:23:32.240 from events. What if we got it? We got to leverage that. We've got it. We've got to find

00:23:36.580 all of the people who care about the culture war, who care about the stuff that's going on and want

00:23:40.020 the world to be better, to be an active participant in making that phone call, sending

00:23:44.340 that tweet and sending that email. Cause what they'll do is they'll, the activists do, they,

00:23:49.380 they have organizations that go around collecting postcards. And then one day a member of Congress

00:23:53.220 gets 8,000 postcards on their desk. And they're like, yikes, this is a big effort. We better do

00:23:57.300 something about it. The activists will spam phone calls to companies and get people banned.

00:24:01.440 They'll mass spam emails. It's time to play ball. It's time to get in this game, right? If there's

00:24:07.200 a company that's producing a show and they're like, we're going to have Steven Crowder do a backflip

00:24:11.060 live, then the company gets 100,000 emails, but from only 10,000 people, they freak out and think

00:24:19.120 it's a bunch of different people. So what we need is we need people who are actively paying attention

00:24:24.300 to this stuff. We're watching stuff like this to be the person who's going to send that email and be

00:24:28.380 like, dude, I am not okay with this. Maybe if every single person who watched it like this would send

00:24:33.660 an email to Disney or to Netflix or to Twitter, Twitter right now, especially with Elon, you might

00:24:39.660 actually see some larger direct action. So this law is going to impact Twitter. Twitter's got a lot of

00:24:45.400 leverage here. You know, Elon Musk runs Twitter, right? Newsom just convinced Elon to move back,

00:24:51.100 move Tesla back to California. Did you guys see that story from a month or so ago?

00:24:54.780 Fucking crazy. So now Elon says, I'm also the CEO of Twitter. And if you make me do this, 0.98

00:25:01.360 we're not going to bring manufacturing back. Yeah. And Twitter is also negotiating with EU

00:25:08.180 and Germany and they're abiding by those content policies as well, which is kind of problematic

00:25:15.700 in itself. One thing we were talking about earlier, James, was the indemnification stuff with Elon in the

00:25:24.620 merger. Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah, I'm happy to. So I know, look, let's kind of

00:25:30.960 level set the conversation, give people some context. So I'll just give an example. So I represented

00:25:38.600 a doctor from Rhode Island, Dr. Andrew Boston, who was kicked off of Twitter for allegedly violating

00:25:46.700 the five strikes rule for COVID misinformation. And what has come out of the Twitter files,

00:25:57.620 some reporting that was done by, I believe, by David Zweig, is that internally, Twitter had

00:26:04.440 reviewed Dr. Boston's account after I wrote a demand letter to the company trying to explain how

00:26:11.780 what he said wasn't violative of any of their policies. By the way, he was reposting and

00:26:17.380 commenting on peer reviewed scientific literature. I mean, it's the most kind of, I mean, and it's no

00:26:25.560 insult to him. I mean, this is dense scientific material that he was trying to discuss like

00:26:30.320 scientists and researchers do. And yet Twitter banned him under the five strike rule. What David

00:26:37.140 Zweig reported out on was that Twitter had internally subjectively concluded that only one of the five

00:26:48.880 strikes were actually valid. And yet they banned him anyway, which led me to tweet out to my followers,

00:26:57.120 you couldn't run a lemonade stand like this. You could not engage in this kind of bait and switch

00:27:02.420 and abuse consumers the way Twitter abused Dr. Boston and get away with it. To your question about

00:27:09.900 what does that mean for accountability for the people who engaged in this kind of conduct? Now,

00:27:17.160 if you go and you read the papers, the deal documents between Elon's new entity and old Twitter,

00:27:26.820 there are, you know, it's, it's dense, there's dozens and dozens and dozens upon dozens of pages. But

00:27:33.220 one question that comes up is, is it possible to hold the people that were engaged in this bad faith

00:27:40.240 conduct individually accountable for cutting off in the case of my client, Dr. Boston, his access to more

00:27:49.340 than 45,000 followers for his content or anybody else, right? Who's using these platforms to

00:27:56.760 support their livelihoods? Is there any accountability? And the, and the answer to that is

00:28:02.300 in the contracts, it's it, the indemnification obligations that Elon Musk's entity has to the old

00:28:10.480 regime are extraordinarily broad. And so if you wanted to sue one of these individuals, what would happen

00:28:17.120 practically is you could sue them and get ready for a Las Vegas style action at BetMGM, the king of

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00:29:18.840 When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins

00:29:24.600 Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you.

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00:29:44.240 Did I mention that we care?

00:29:48.360 They're going to send the bill for their attorneys to Elon Musk, who will have to promptly pay them.

00:29:54.360 And ultimately, Mr. Musk would have to pay out damages in the event there was even a

00:30:00.100 judgment. I wonder if this is why Elon tried to back out of the Twitter purchase.

00:30:03.840 Because at first it was like, I can buy this, I can fix it. And then after reviewing with his

00:30:07.640 lawyers, they're like, you're also going to be liable for all of these lawsuits. Everything you

00:30:12.200 know about what Twitter was doing wrong is correct. And then when you buy it, now it's on you.

00:30:17.300 And now he's almost blown the whistle on himself and put all this further evidence out there,

00:30:22.060 despite the fact that, you know, he would have obligations if, if, you know,

00:30:26.760 more people sue Twitter in the same way that Berenson's did.

00:30:30.820 Right. And to your point, I mean, that's a truly, I mean, it is, and I know there are people that

00:30:36.340 will criticize Elon Musk, but it is a really extraordinary thing that he would allow that

00:30:43.280 kind of level of transparency into the inner workings of the censorship apparatus.

00:30:49.000 Despite the risk to himself.

00:30:51.080 Well, so, so this opens up risk to, to, to him and his entity Twitter. Let's talk about the inverse.

00:30:59.060 So are we fucking up by announcing that we're doing this lawsuit, giving them advanced notice? 0.92

00:31:03.540 You know what I mean? Like declaring to your enemy, heads up, we will be, you know, coming at you in 0.98

00:31:08.480 one week's time, sharp your defenses.

00:31:10.780 I don't think it's enough time.

00:31:12.120 I don't, I don't think they're already have it written.

00:31:13.860 I don't think they're going to be able to get a, a, a, a, any corrective measures through the

00:31:19.920 legislature out there.

00:31:21.860 Yeah. I guess that's the issue with government is like, you can scream it. They're too slow to

00:31:24.780 do anything anyway. Like that it would take too long for a committee hearing to happen on addressing

00:31:29.620 or assessing anything. I wonder though, how do they, how do they, like, how are they able to

00:31:33.420 respond quickly to lawsuits in that case? I mean, some, certainly some state lawyer or whatever has

00:31:37.960 to just immediately start drafting up a defense or something.

00:31:40.420 Right. Oh, yeah. I mean, the attorney general's office in California will, will, will defend

00:31:44.460 the suit as they, they have, as they defended, for example, the, the, the, the medical misinformation

00:31:50.960 statute that was passed and that was enjoined recently.

00:31:55.840 Oh, that was enjoined.

00:31:56.600 Yeah, it was, it was enjoined. Yes.

00:31:58.060 That was the one where they said doctors can only say what we tell them to say, right?

00:32:01.020 Uh, that's, that's the, yeah, that's the thumbnail sketch of it that they, that unless, unless they

00:32:07.560 advance a particular, uh, narrative, then their medical license could be at risk.

00:32:15.300 And now that's enjoined.

00:32:16.800 That is blocked.

00:32:17.720 That is blocked. That is enjoined, uh, right now.

00:32:20.540 Were you involved in that or no?

00:32:21.340 I'm not, I'm not involved in that.

00:32:22.900 That's great though. Fantastic work to whoever.

00:32:24.200 Some great work, I believe by Janine Younes.

00:32:26.480 You know what else we, we need is that the ATF ruling on the, totally as an aside and just as a

00:32:32.220 short derailment, the, the ATF, uh, executive was the, the, the, the arbitrary change of policy

00:32:37.760 from the ATF, making it illegal to have a pistol brace. Like we are, we are increasingly seeing

00:32:42.100 government just abandon legislation and go straight for we've deemed it to be illegal. Have a nice day.

00:32:48.280 That, that is something that I'm very passionate about because Tim, to your point, some of the

00:32:53.800 folks that are the most ardent advocates of that approach to governing will talk, will, will,

00:33:00.960 will talk approvingly about those kinds of measures. And then they'll talk about our democracy.

00:33:06.620 Well, interestingly enough, and not coincidentally, many of these major decisions are not being made

00:33:16.260 by the democratic, uh, branches of government. They're being forced through administrative rule

00:33:22.640 makings. It's an absolute contradiction to, uh, present yourself as some kind of advocate for,

00:33:30.980 for, for democracy and self-government when at the same time, unelected bureaucrats within 0.92

00:33:37.280 the federal government and at the state level too. And we saw that throughout COVID announced these

00:33:43.040 unilateral edicts that ha that bind men and women businesses and infringe on our, on our core,

00:33:50.920 our, uh, our core rights. People need to just start telling these people fuck off. Yeah. But the 1.00

00:33:57.660 scary thing is like, there's, there's just too many people who have, have, we see it with the COVID

00:34:02.900 lockdowns. It's easier for them to get on their knees and, and lick the feet of these bureaucrats 1.00

00:34:09.480 than it is to just tell them to screw off. Well, it's interesting watching Elon kind of navigate, 0.98

00:34:12.940 navigate the whole hate speech thing because, you know, obviously no one likes it when people are

00:34:18.300 hateful. You know, we're kind of, no one's a fan of hate. And so, you know, when, when you, when we

00:34:23.920 go into this position, it's like, Oh, we're defending misinformation, disinformation, hate,

00:34:28.800 no, no, no, no, no, no. But we need those terms to be defined and clear. Like you, you, you see Elon

00:34:34.360 like showing these graphs of how hate on Twitter has gone down and he's trying, he's playing the game.

00:34:39.160 You know, the real, the real definition for misinformation and disinformation is anything

00:34:44.300 not reported by corporate press. If the Washington Post or the New York times lies, they will use

00:34:51.700 them as the official source. The New York times could write sky is green. And then if you tweet,

00:34:58.440 the sky is blue, they'll say that's misinformation. Here's our proof. And they will cite the New York

00:35:02.360 times. But the New York times is just human beings writing bullshit on computers. There is no reason to 1.00

00:35:08.820 believe the New York times is any more credible than anyone else other than they're a corporate

00:35:12.620 entity with worth lots of money. That makes no sense. But that is the standard by which these

00:35:17.740 people operate. It's misinformation and disinformation. We have to stop it. Well, why is it that Breitbart,

00:35:25.080 for instance, has like a low news guard rating, but has broken major stories are confirmed to be true.

00:35:29.460 The New York post publishes the Hunter Biden laptop and they say, Oh, it's fake news. It's the New

00:35:33.520 York post. So I think it's like the oldest paper in existence now in this country, or one of the

00:35:38.400 least, if it doesn't fall in line with the democratic establishment and the corporate

00:35:43.420 press, it's disinformation. But if a month later, the New York times is forced to correct,

00:35:48.700 then it was actually true. But retroactively, you know, I'm surprised they didn't include

00:35:53.360 the term malinformation. Have you, have you heard? Oh, yeah. Oh, true, but inconvenient

00:35:57.160 information. Malinformation. Malinformation. That's referenced. True, but inconvenient. That's

00:36:02.140 literally the definition. I know. And you can see in the internal communications in Twitter.

00:36:06.280 Yeah. The Twitter files. This is amazing. When they were talking about censoring true

00:36:10.320 information that may cause vaccine hesitancy, like they're outright saying we have a political

00:36:15.760 outcome we seek and must inhibit the spreading of information that is true because it goes against

00:36:21.620 our agenda. That's what they're saying. Incredible. Here we are. We are sitting here and, and, and it's,

00:36:28.440 and it's frustrating because I know for a fact that if I make a video showing like some,

00:36:34.060 you know, if we had a video of a morbidly obese, purple haired Twitter employee saying,

00:36:42.720 breaking it down, you'd get a million views. You get a lawyer in a room who explains this is a crisis

00:36:47.780 we're facing and you get a hundred thousand views. You know what I mean? Like that's,

00:36:51.960 you got to dye your hair, dude. I, I, I, I guess I, uh, I guess I need to, you know,

00:36:57.540 I have that clean cut, uh, appearance, I suppose, but, but Tim, to your point about, uh,

00:37:04.800 missing disinformation. And I know that this is a sort of a cliche that's out there. It seems that,

00:37:10.220 um, missing disinformation is, you know, it's just six months away from being, uh, true information.

00:37:16.560 Right. And, and, and, and, and, and, and we see that with the, we see that with the vaccines in

00:37:21.020 particular, right? So my client, Alex Berenson was de-platformed and his fifth strike was for saying

00:37:27.300 among other things, but the core of what he said was that the vaccines don't stop infection and they

00:37:32.480 don't stop transmission. He said that on August 28th, 2021, when he said it, it was, it was

00:37:38.420 demonstrably true. It was being conceded. They had conceded, they had conceded that it, that it was

00:37:45.520 true. And yet he was, he, he was de-platformed anyway. And now of course it's accepted as, as

00:37:51.800 gospel truth. Have you seen that meme where it's like, I need new conspiracy theories because my

00:37:55.960 old ones came true or all my old ones came true. Yeah. That's why everyone keeps saying Alex Jones

00:38:01.560 was right. And it's like, well, you know, Alex Jones was right on all the things that were based

00:38:05.580 in reality. You know what I mean? Like there's a lot of stuff. Like he went on Joe Rogan a few years

00:38:09.980 ago and he was talking about fifth dimensional aliens and like chimeras and stuff. And it's like,

00:38:14.340 okay, look, I get it. Epstein, censorship, politics, like Alex Jones has got a pretty

00:38:20.800 good batting average, but then he does a lot of stuff. You know what I mean? But, but I digress.

00:38:24.540 I'm not here to rag on or compliment Alex, just to point out that it's, it's become apparent that

00:38:30.340 all of these quote unquote conspiracy theories end up being true. And so you have these, these

00:38:34.540 active tech billionaires, elites, and government actors who are trying to suppress true and correct

00:38:39.100 information. They're not going to win this one. It's, it's insane to think they can control

00:38:43.400 information. It's like standing in a river, holding your hands up, trying to stop the water.

00:38:47.720 That's what they're doing. But with laws like this, they are calling upon the forces of government to

00:38:51.900 try and build dams on the flow of information, true and correct information. Can you speak to

00:38:57.200 your time in the FDA a little bit? I wanted to make sure you get that in because explain, explain

00:39:02.240 what that experience was like. Well, yeah, I mean, I, I can go over it a little bit. Yeah. I mean,

00:39:07.700 I, so like a lot of people, um, I was sitting on my couch and March of 2020 was working at a large law

00:39:16.440 firm, had a successful commercial practice, uh, 15 days to start the spread happened. My wife and I

00:39:23.960 had three kids at the time. She was pregnant with our fourth child and the opportunity presented itself

00:39:30.400 to leave what I was doing and go and serve in the Trump administration. And my wife and I thought

00:39:38.200 about it. We prayed about it, believe that God was calling us to make the sacrifice. I went into

00:39:44.500 the administration. I worked as a deputy general counsel at HHS and, uh, worked for the general

00:39:50.920 counsel there. And, um, we, we did a lot of really amazing things in the time that, uh, I was there

00:39:58.760 the relatively short time that I was there to go back to the issue of our democracy. One of the

00:40:03.640 things that we did was create a rulemaking that would require all of HHS's various components,

00:40:10.680 including the FDA to retrospectively review the rules and the regulations that they are foisting

00:40:17.880 upon the American people for various reasons. And if they didn't retrospectively review those and

00:40:25.400 publish an analysis showing that the cost and benefits lined up and show their work to the

00:40:30.860 American people, the regulation would expire automatically. So it was called the sunset rule. 0.56

00:40:34.780 Yeah. I love those. It was called the sunset rule. And, um, the Biden administration after,

00:40:40.140 uh, the new coming administration came in, they, they, they, they promptly undid it. And by the way,

00:40:47.280 and by the way, and by the way, this is a concept and it's outlined in the rulemaking.

00:40:51.960 It was a concept of retrospective review that has been endorsed by basically every president

00:40:57.560 since Ronald Reagan to include Barack Obama. So it's, it's not like it's a radical notion. And

00:41:03.480 a lot of States do similar things with respect to sunset rules. But yes, I, I, I worked on, on,

00:41:09.840 on those kinds of things on, uh, drug pricing initiatives. And, um, at the end of the administration,

00:41:15.760 I was the outgoing chief counsel of the FDA of the food and drug administration. And I continue to

00:41:21.020 represent clients and businesses and entrepreneurs who are trying to commercialize

00:41:25.980 medical technology, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and so on.

00:41:31.100 In terms of probably like, I was going to say, I'm just thinking about maybe a Friday afternoon

00:41:36.120 wasn't the best day to announce that we're suing the state. You know what I mean? But,

00:41:39.620 but I'll make sure to bring it back up on Monday because Friday is where news goes to die.

00:41:43.600 Yeah. The, what's the process for getting, is it once a sunset law has been initiated,

00:41:50.300 but then overturned, is it easier to get it reinstated later because it existed at once in the

00:41:56.480 past? Well, there's certainly things for the agency to draw on, to be able to promulgate a new

00:42:03.260 rule. So just to give the audience a quick synopsis. So when, when you, you hear about these

00:42:08.820 regulations that come out, you mentioned the ATF rule. Um, there's a requirement that the agencies

00:42:14.880 give notice to the community through the federal register. So they publish a proposal of this is

00:42:22.300 the regulation that we intend to implement. They explain how it works. They explain the economic and

00:42:28.700 legal and scientific rationale for it. There's an opportunity to comment on it. And then the agency

00:42:34.320 typically has to take in that feedback, incorporate it, and then finalize the rule. And that's what

00:42:40.760 we did in the context of the sunset rule, which was, um, opposed interestingly enough by, um, I believe

00:42:48.060 in even by some members of industry, um, who didn't want the uncertainty that the, the, the rule would,

00:42:53.760 would, uh, would require. But to answer, you know, to answer your question, if, if, if a regulation was

00:42:59.440 sunset, that means that the agency would have to go back to the drawing board because what we,

00:43:04.060 we, we, we saw, and what is, is, I, I don't think it's, it's a radical statement to make is when

00:43:11.460 agencies promulgate rules that bind the American people. And there are a lot of them that date back

00:43:16.680 to before the internet, for example, I mean, the economy's changed a lot in the last 25 years.

00:43:22.020 And so when you've done economic projections that say that the benefits are X and the costs are Y,

00:43:28.660 and you then look at that through the lens of the current state of 2023, you know, it's not X and Y

00:43:37.100 it's, it's, uh, A and B and, and A and B are a lot more than X and Y. And so that's why the

00:43:42.940 retrospective review process is so necessary. But again, I mean, get ready for a Las Vegas style

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00:45:14.520 The agencies would have to go back to the drawing board if the rules were sunset. And again,

00:45:20.700 this is driving toward what Congress already requires under something called the Regulatory

00:45:25.960 Flexibility Act, which Carter signed into law in 1980, which is that these agencies have to do this

00:45:31.760 work. And they aren't doing the work for the most part. In very rare cases are they're doing the work.

00:45:37.300 And the American people are entitled to have them do the work and see the work and analyze the work.

00:45:43.060 Isn't it crazy that the lockdown was three years ago?

00:45:46.080 We're just totally derailing. I was thinking about like, you're mentioning it's three years

00:45:49.760 when this, you know, and I'm just like, wow, three years ago.

00:45:52.220 It was. And, and, you know,

00:45:54.800 like my time jump, my, my, my regret is that I wasn't representing clients

00:46:01.420 in litigation from the day they started, uh, our, my, a partner of mine at Envisage, actually,

00:46:09.080 uh, Tony Biller, he and I at our prior law firm represented at the very outset, this was very

00:46:16.300 early. This was in early April of 2021. We represented people who wanted to go out into

00:46:20.860 downtown Raleigh and protest the lockdowns. And remember there was a tweet by the Raleigh police

00:46:25.420 department that said protesting is not an essential activity. Uh, and so we, we, we represented those,

00:46:33.200 uh, those protesters. We stood up for free speech. We stood up for, uh, the right to protest. And,

00:46:40.040 um, ultimately the governor of North Carolina, uh, caved and allowed the protest to go forward

00:46:47.120 without having allowed, uh, and well, right, but surrendered his impedance to, to, to, to,

00:46:54.400 so that those people could go out on the streets and, and, and, you know, protest without being

00:47:00.140 threatened with arrest. But again, my regret in some, in some ways looking back is that

00:47:06.480 I wasn't more aggressive on, on what happened. And again, let's talk about our democracy.

00:47:12.460 Hindsight's 2020, man.

00:47:13.500 Well, it is, but our democracy, let's talk about our democracy for a second.

00:47:17.120 Think about how many of those COVID lockdown measures were never voted on. In my, in my home

00:47:23.580 state of North Carolina, Governor Cooper issued these edicts deciding which businesses could stay

00:47:31.180 open and which businesses had to shutter, which, uh, organizations had, could gather and which

00:47:37.060 couldn't, which were, which, which were essential, right? So, but to be fair, I mean, we know that

00:47:42.700 free speech and second amendment protests were spreading COVID and black lives matter protests

00:47:46.940 were actually stopping the spread of COVID because the virus was actually recoiling in fear, the

00:47:51.660 thought of racial, racial equity. So, you know, I understand why these governors allowed one and

00:47:56.780 not the other. Makes perfect sense.

00:47:58.320 Well, well, but remember the public health community came out and, uh, did the about face that it did.

00:48:04.240 And if you remember, I'm sure you do. There's videos of nurses clapping and cheering for the

00:48:08.540 protesters who are marching. Right. But then also of them holding up signs, blocking right-wing

00:48:12.880 protesters who are talking about free speech. Right. They're like, these people are, it's a zombie

00:48:18.160 cult. Right. And, and, um, and unfortunately a lot of people, a lot of people were harmed by it. And,

00:48:26.100 and my heart goes out to, uh, a lot of the, the, you know, the ordinary working class people who, uh,

00:48:33.480 couldn't work from home and, uh, were dependent on, for example, the restaurant industry to put food

00:48:41.080 on the table for their families. All that food's spoiled. I mean, the double standard, the double

00:48:45.520 standard for hate misinformation, like, you know, a certain ideology is allowed to physically protest

00:48:51.100 during COVID, but another ideology is not allowed to same online. It's like certain ideology is allowed

00:48:56.980 to be hateful and spread misinformation on social networks. Another ideology is not, I mean,

00:49:02.260 misinformation is permitted on social networks, which, and we all know the issues. We all know

00:49:08.040 calls for violence. Yeah. To your point, Bill, can you think of an, and Tim, I'll ask you this too.

00:49:14.320 Can you think of a single time content has been flagged on Twitter or any of the other social media

00:49:19.940 platforms because somebody said something too, uh, flattering about the vaccines that they were,

00:49:26.900 that they were, I mean, you've seen them referred to, and I don't think this is, I think this is

00:49:30.400 hyperbole, right? But you see the vaccines referred to as a miracle. You see people say,

00:49:35.360 those aren't, I'll tell you the story. Um, the, the, the, the, the policy, the rule for YouTube,

00:49:42.540 for instance, is you can't discourage people from going to the doctor or encourage treatments

00:49:46.760 like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. You can't, you can't definitively say that they,

00:49:50.380 they're effective. Not that I think they do. I honestly, I don't understand why people are so

00:49:54.060 adamant on believing that they do. I think it's tribal the same way people think it isn't. I'm

00:49:57.900 like, I don't know, man, but here's, here's a funny thing. Casey Neistat, I like the guy,

00:50:03.260 but he tweets out that he's like, go get vaccinated. And I'm like, isn't giving medical advice a

00:50:10.040 violation of the rules. I respond, no comma, talk to your doctor. Uh, if it makes sense for you.

00:50:18.300 And he responds with that's weird. I didn't talk to my doctor. I went to a drive up and got the

00:50:24.080 vaccine in, you know, in my car. And my dude was like, you drove into a parking lot and let a

00:50:28.960 strange man inject your arm with an unknown substance. Are you fucking insane? Go to a doctor, 1.00

00:50:34.360 man. And then the people respond to me. They're like, Tim, you're just an idiot. The doctor is just

00:50:38.820 going to take the vaccine anyway. And I was like, then why are you mad if you, if we agree on this

00:50:43.800 and the doctor should be the one telling you to do it. People were allowed to go on social media

00:50:48.040 and encourage you to go to a seven 11 parking lot to let a stranger inject your body. And that was

00:50:53.200 allowed. Yet someone might be like, there's actually a medication that's very famous and

00:50:57.880 well-known called Ivermectin banned totally and outright. That is absolutely insane. These people,

00:51:03.780 look, man, I'll say it again. The media tried painting me daily beast called me the

00:51:08.820 poster boy Vivermectin, despite me saying consistently and insistently, I don't think

00:51:14.240 it does anything. Even arguing with Joe Rogan, I'm like, I don't know that it does. And Joe was

00:51:18.860 like, it's a protease inhibitor does this. And I'm like, look, I think it's tribal. I think it's

00:51:22.740 true. I'm not saying it doesn't. I just don't know. I'm not a doctor. Talk to a doctor. But think

00:51:26.100 about how insane that is, that it is acceptable to walk into a parking lot and have a stranger inject

00:51:32.580 you without knowing your medical history, without knowing your allergies. That should fall

00:51:37.240 under the same medical misinformation policy. But it doesn't because these people are a cult.

00:51:44.220 Let me just say it again. For all that are listening, I know it's very difficult. A lot

00:51:46.840 of people are like, Trump supporters are in a cult. Many are. I acknowledge that outright. A lot of

00:51:50.960 these Trump supporters are cultish, but y'all are in a cult too. And you know how I can tell you 0.54

00:51:55.840 definitively because you drove into a parking lot where you met a strange man you did not know

00:52:01.520 and let them either stick a Q-tip into your nose or inject your arm with something. And you just said,

00:52:09.040 sounds good to me. Me? I'm like, I'm just gonna go talk to him. I want to talk to my doctor.

00:52:14.620 My doctor said not to get the vaccine because the concern at the time was I'm young, I'm healthy,

00:52:19.440 and older people need it. So they were like, you're not at risk. You shouldn't get it.

00:52:22.760 Of course, that changed when they went, everyone should get it no matter what.

00:52:26.120 But at that point, I'd gotten sick. We got the monoclonal antibodies and all that stuff.

00:52:28.900 It's just that should be the clearest indicator that this whole thing was political and made no

00:52:33.100 sense. I was going to say, I'm curious if this censorship industrial complex that Taibbi and

00:52:40.660 Schellenberger are referring to, do you think that the AB 587 in California, this law that we're

00:52:49.480 talking about, do you think that that bureaucratic infrastructure that they're trying to create

00:52:54.900 where basically, you know, private companies have to have this conversation with the state

00:53:00.300 about content moderation? Is that related to this censorship industrial complex that was happening

00:53:05.660 in the Twitter files? Is it the same infrastructure?

00:53:08.600 I think if you don't have it, right, in your platform that's subject to these regulations,

00:53:14.640 you got to build it, right? So otherwise, how are you going to comply?

00:53:19.180 So to your point, I think it, it, it certainly makes it, it puts people in positions within

00:53:27.140 these companies who are, I would argue, predisposed to, to censor because this is their, this is

00:53:34.440 their industry. This is what they do. They're, they're-

00:53:36.840 And who's determining the enforcement? So they, they, they start finding us 15K a day at some

00:53:41.160 point in the future, you know, if, if, if, if we have violations and who's the board determining

00:53:48.260 these violations.

00:53:49.840 Well, I mean, ultimately, ultimately, I think, practically speaking, the way it would work

00:53:54.680 is you would, you would end up having a, the, the attorney general's office would, would file

00:53:59.520 a complaint against the company and eventually try to, try to sue to collect the, I believe,

00:54:05.960 again, it was, it's $15,000 a day, dollars a day in-

00:54:09.100 Per violation.

00:54:10.220 Penalties.

00:54:10.900 Right. So I think that's the way that it would practically work itself out. But yeah, to your

00:54:17.060 point, the, the, to comply with this, folks are going to have to, the platforms, maybe they have

00:54:26.600 the existing infrastructure, maybe they're going to have to hire-

00:54:28.720 But these, these portals that exist on Twitter for, for, you know, basic communication with the

00:54:33.700 government for the takedown requests, like who, I'm curious if this is still going on in Twitter

00:54:40.640 first, because, you know, these portals were set up between Facebook and Twitter. Does it,

00:54:45.020 you know, does that still exist at Twitter?

00:54:46.720 Yeah, I mean, where's Elon? Is he, like, has anyone asked him about this?

00:54:49.480 I have, I've tried to reach out, but yeah, I think that-

00:54:52.500 Well, I, I, I sent a, an email to press at twitter.com to, to ask him a very serious

00:54:58.120 question. What does Elon Musk eat for breakfast? And they responded with shit. I couldn't believe

00:55:02.520 it. I tweeted, you see, I tweeted that out.

00:55:04.260 A delicious poop emoji. 0.51

00:55:06.240 I'm like, more people need to throw pies. No, but the story there was that Elon changed the

00:55:10.480 press at Twitter to always just auto reply with poop emojis. Amazing. And so I immediately was

00:55:14.940 like, I got you. I'm going to get, I'm going to get you. But no, in all seriousness, you know,

00:55:21.280 where, where is Elon in terms of whether or not they're still doing this portal? He's not,

00:55:25.580 I don't think he's ever said he deleted it.

00:55:27.300 No, no. And I think that it was funny when Dorsey before he's kind of gone dark on Twitter.

00:55:32.180 If you notice, he's like barely post there anymore. 0.96

00:55:34.880 I think he's an evil dude, man.

00:55:36.040 I mean, he actually called out Elon when the Twitter files were first starting. He was 0.66

00:55:41.160 like, you should just publish absolutely everything that exists.

00:55:47.560 You should.

00:55:48.220 Including now and in the future for what you're doing now, which was an interesting move on

00:55:52.240 his part to kind of, you know, he tried to see if, you know, he could play chicken with

00:55:56.840 Elon. But, you know, it's understandable why Elon wouldn't publish absolutely everything.

00:56:01.840 But present day Twitter does matter. Apparently they're going to open source the algorithm in a

00:56:05.540 couple of days. So I know that's, that's, that's really amazing. Yeah. I think Elon's doing great

00:56:10.040 work. You know, we, we had Bannon on Timcast IRL and he said that, that he thought Elon was a

00:56:14.940 shill for China and all that stuff. And it's just like, come on, man. Like I've got my criticisms of

00:56:20.180 Elon with China and, and questions about it, but Elon's doing such good and important work on this

00:56:26.360 end. Like, I mean, I don't know what else to say, you know, do good work, get credit.

00:56:31.820 Right. Where credit is due. And it takes a long time to turn a ship that, that, that's that big.

00:56:37.020 Yeah. My main concern is a lot of the people, like how many people were banned that don't have

00:56:43.360 audiences? I'm curious if they've been let back on Twitter. Cause like, you know, a bunch of high

00:56:48.040 profile people have come back. That's great. Tons of progress to Twitter, obviously like Elon's doing

00:56:52.640 very good work, but like, what about all the people who just are screwed and they got banned for

00:56:58.860 posting some COVID thing? And that's what Ben was saying. Yeah. There's a lot of Patriots that

00:57:03.200 Elon has not let back on the platform. Right. I mean, he won't let Alex Jones on the platform for

00:57:09.300 personal bias reasons. Yeah. Not a good thing. I think Elon's doing a massive net positive. Yes.

00:57:15.440 But there's some things where it's like, come on, bro. You know, I think the issue is that the

00:57:19.780 reality is he has a limit to what he can do and letting Alex Jones back on would be too much.

00:57:24.300 And it would nuke Twitter cause then advertisers, I mean, probably Apple. I mean, he went and met

00:57:29.840 with Tim cook the other day. I would not be surprised at all if they had conversations

00:57:33.320 about like certain limitations and you know, what was acceptable because I just wish it's

00:57:38.640 yeah. I just wish people were not so cowardly. Here's my recommendation to Elon. He should

00:57:44.420 open a thousand dollar a month option for people who just want to support Twitter. Cause you

00:57:49.380 know, he doesn't, he needs to become not dependent on advertisers. He still is.

00:57:52.940 That's why he's doing so Twitter blue, but it's like eight bucks here.

00:57:55.740 Launch a big tier. Launch a huge tier.

00:57:57.840 So what we're doing, uh, all of you listening, become a member at timcast.com. Click the join

00:58:01.640 us button. We launched the discord where we've got the time gated lounge. After six months,

00:58:06.460 you get access to the VIP room that or 25 bucks. Then we've got the silver lounge, 25 bucks

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00:59:10.060 When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins

00:59:17.260 Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you.

00:59:25.240 Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part.

00:59:31.260 Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care.

00:59:36.080 Did I mention that we care?

00:59:40.060 And there's a lot of people who are like $100. That's insane. Who would spend that? And it's like

00:59:44.360 the people who want access to the internal workings of the company who want to be directly involved

00:59:48.100 with the projects we're working on, beta testing stuff, checking out the video games. These are

00:59:51.700 the people that are supporting us to such a degree that we're involving them in the insider information.

00:59:57.880 And if you don't want that, you don't need it. Don't worry about it. The point is we're thinking

01:00:01.080 how can we give more to the people who support us so that they support us more? If there are people who

01:00:08.760 are willing to spend $100 a month to be part of the elite club, and it means we get to do better and

01:00:13.140 more work, and they get something of value in return being involved, and we're going to do the physical

01:00:18.060 space at the new coffee shop with games and stuff like that. Elon Musk needs to make those tiers as

01:00:24.580 well. He's got the Twitter blue for, you know, what is it, $8 or whatever? Yeah. Then I think on

01:00:29.960 iPhone, it's like, what, $12 or something because of the stupid percentage. In-app purchases is stupid. 1.00

01:00:33.820 Yeah, make another one. Make Twitter blue, make Twitter silver, make Twitter gold, make Twitter 1.00

01:00:38.120 platinum, and let people and businesses spend more. I said this, there should be a Twitter premium elite

01:00:44.300 business package where it's like $300 a month. I'd sign my company up instantly if it meant that I

01:00:50.180 could then type in to an account, like, here are all my employees. They all instantly get verified.

01:00:56.160 They're part of that network. Here's the thing. We thought about, can we get all of our employees

01:01:00.640 verified? We want them to be using Twitter. We want them on Twitter blue. Well, how do you do it? Do I

01:01:05.580 make a new account for every person? Do we have them use their business account? What credit card do we

01:01:09.980 use? We need a simplified business plan where I can go in as admin and just say, here's a list of my

01:01:15.780 employees, and then they all instantly get verified. And then later when that employee leaves,

01:01:20.000 I can remove them from the business plan. He needs, I'm like, why, why? I mean, maybe he's

01:01:25.940 just got his hands full. I know what it's like to run a company. So do you. There's only so much you

01:01:28.840 can do. So I think, I think that's a tremendous opportunity for Twitter to, to get away from these

01:01:33.900 advertisers. I also just think to go back to what I said earlier, I don't mean to say Elon's a coward

01:01:39.520 because he's certainly one of the least cowardly people. I'm just like, call their bluff. You know what I

01:01:45.000 mean? Like imagine, uh, uh, imagine just every time you're trying to negotiate a business deal,

01:01:50.840 you just back down and take the lowest number. That's what our political system is.

01:01:56.880 At some point, you've got to call them out and be like, I'm willing to bet you will not let this

01:02:01.520 deal fall. So what I do in negotiations, because, and maybe the reason I want this is because this is

01:02:08.500 how I am. I've, I've done business negotiations where it'll be like, I sued someone once and, uh,

01:02:16.080 I'll keep the details very vague. Let's just say the number was $10,000. I went to them and said,

01:02:21.820 I want $10,000. And they said, okay, well, let's negotiate. We'll do seven. I said, now I want 12.

01:02:27.140 And they went, what we're negotiating. And I'm like, uh-huh. And you're wasting my time.

01:02:31.380 If you don't accept 12, I'm going to 14 next. Now it's 12. And they went, okay, okay. It's 12. It's 12.

01:02:36.780 Because I'm like, either that or we go to court. I told you 10, I was being reasonable. And then

01:02:42.360 you came back and tried to waste my time. Now it's 12. If you want to try me again, 14. And if

01:02:47.420 you think that's not good enough, I will see you in court and we'll ask a judge. And then you can

01:02:51.240 spend the money on that. Good luck. Here's the issue. These people all play this game where they're

01:02:55.440 like, you don't want to spend the money in court, bro. I'm bored. Bring it on, dude. I'll spend the

01:02:59.420 money. I will make it as painful for you as possible. Why don't we have that in business and

01:03:04.980 politics? You get people who go, well, it's not worth the fight. Then what are you doing?

01:03:12.520 What are you doing? Call them out. I'm willing to bet. I think about this in terms of like

01:03:18.640 muggings and crime. That dude who's walking up, what's his end game? I've been in so many

01:03:25.960 countries. I've seen so much of criminal behavior. They want an easy mark. They want to get the

01:03:32.320 cash. They want to get out. Nobody wants to get hurt. We know this about animals. Should

01:03:36.120 you worry about a grizzly bear? If the bear is starving or if you're near its babies.

01:03:40.260 But for the most part, the animal is going to run away from you. Wolf going to run away

01:03:43.060 from you. They're more scared of you than you are of it unless you threaten it in some

01:03:46.280 way. So if someone comes at me and they're trying to like take something from me, my response

01:03:51.940 is you've got an option to go find an easier mark or this will be the most painful experience

01:03:57.320 of any mugging you've ever dealt with because I will do everything in my power to make sure

01:04:02.280 it hurts. And they're going to be like, I'm going to find somebody who's going to hand

01:04:05.600 me their phone. I've been in situations. I've experienced this stuff. We need that attitude

01:04:10.860 in politics. I don't even think necessarily Trump had that to a certain degree, but he

01:04:14.980 did have it more than anybody else. I want to see Elon Musk go to Apple and be like, I'm

01:04:19.000 bringing Alex Jones back. You want to ban us? Bring it on. You will see the biggest news

01:04:24.000 story. You will see 300 million angry users. And I'll tell them, I'll guess what? If you've

01:04:29.460 got a problem with this, Android still allows the app. I think Google would be very happy

01:04:34.000 to hear that they're going to get, hey, let's say 10% of Twitter's user base decides to switch

01:04:39.200 from iPhone to Apple. You willing to lose 30 million iPhone customers? Try me, motherfucker.

01:04:45.180 And Apple's going to be like, calm down. Fine. Bring Alex Jones back. We don't want to go 1.00

01:04:49.900 to war. The problem is too many people are unwilling to just lay it down and say, I will

01:04:56.400 burn this whole thing to the ground. And you know what? You may win in the end, but you

01:05:01.400 will be burnt along with us. You want your company horribly disfigured and damaged? Fine.

01:05:07.600 You'll survive. Maybe I won't. But are you willing to go to those lengths? I am. I want to see

01:05:12.220 that in politics. I want to see that in business. I'm getting so frustrated with this. I've often

01:05:16.660 said I would never run for office. Now I'm entertaining maybe down the line in 10 years

01:05:20.900 running for office so that I can be the person on the debate stage saying, I will destroy you 1.00

01:05:25.600 and everything you hold dear if you play stupid fucking games. And if it means the end of my 1.00

01:05:31.760 career, I ain't got nothing to lose anyway, baby. Do you want to go to war? Bring it on.

01:05:35.380 Can we get one person to just say that? One time. One time. Yeah. Someone do that. 0.93

01:05:40.220 Yeah. Hey, you can find Alex on Mines. I mean, look.

01:05:43.540 Right. There you go. You have to. You're like, I'm doing it.

01:05:48.200 It's unbelievable. I mean, I mean, you didn't, you didn't say it the way I did, but you were

01:05:51.760 like, we're going to let Alex Jones be on Mines. Of course. I mean, it's, but the, anyway,

01:05:56.620 we don't need to get in. I did want to bring up band camp a little bit. Let's talk about

01:06:00.000 band camp. Before the end. Yeah. Cause, cause, cause I'll play that game too. I mean, should

01:06:05.600 we, let's, let's, you know, just people know the situation, but I mean, yeah, I fully intend

01:06:11.400 to file litigation against band camp. The store, we released a song today called bright

01:06:17.400 eyes. You can find it. Tim cast music on YouTube. Admittedly, you know, I think about the point

01:06:23.000 with the music stuff where we put a lot of weight and power behind the first several songs

01:06:29.060 we released. Now we've got to get into the point of just sort of releasing the music

01:06:32.680 and letting the music carry itself. So they'll probably do not as well because they're not

01:06:36.340 going to get the full weight, but I'm going to be promoting the song pretty heavily throughout

01:06:39.420 the next week. And I'm really hoping we can get four of four on billboard. So if you want

01:06:44.480 to support us, trash house records.com for those that don't know band camp, we, we had

01:06:50.960 three songs on band camp. Those three songs charted on billboard three for three, 100% all

01:06:56.760 out of the ballpark. That's, that's not common for musicians. Band camp abruptly deleted our

01:07:02.600 account as well as five times, August Bryson gray and a few others. I think Bryson gray, I

01:07:07.700 know five times, August in the same time period. I don't know exactly when we've received no

01:07:11.860 notice. We have no idea what's going on. They've refused any and all communication. Now there

01:07:17.220 are several concerns that I have one. Do the people who purchased the song have access to

01:07:21.700 the song? If not, well, they're there. That's a serious infringement on the arrangement I have

01:07:28.120 and they have with their customers. Some people have said they still have access to the song,

01:07:32.940 which brings me to the next problem. Copyright infringement. They have terminated our working

01:07:38.440 relationship and my access to revenue for those songs, but they're still distributing that song.

01:07:43.640 Whoa, whoa, whoa. We got a problem here. They have my song on their platform that they are

01:07:49.540 distributing without my control or access or say, well, that can't work. Can it? I mean,

01:07:55.340 that they're, they're playing my music. I say copyright infringement. I want, and also another

01:08:02.040 major component. I don't know if they're holding money of mine because they have no communication

01:08:06.720 with me. Considering we were doing sales on the platform up until they just abruptly banned us.

01:08:10.860 I can only assume they have my money until they can release a report and at least email us and say,

01:08:18.080 here's what happened. Here's our breakdown. They haven't done it. So I think they've also violated

01:08:23.740 the rights of the customers. When people were buying a song on Bandcamp, they weren't just getting

01:08:28.380 access to that song. They were getting access to a community around my music. None of our songs broke

01:08:34.680 any rules. None of our songs made direct references. One song was a love song. One song was generic

01:08:39.920 anti-establishment with no references to any person, no hate speech, nothing like that. And one song was

01:08:44.980 a story about a fictional revolution that never mentioned anything violent. And it talked about

01:08:49.880 tearing down statues. That's all. They banned us without notice. So I intend to pursue litigation

01:08:56.560 against them. So we can, first of all, I mean, I need to know if they have my money

01:09:01.900 and I'm assuming they do, because I think these people are acting maliciously.

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01:10:05.180 When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops.

01:10:09.620 So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level

01:10:13.880 to tell our clients that we really care about you.

01:10:16.760 We care about you.

01:10:18.060 We care about you.

01:10:18.840 Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs.

01:10:22.220 Weird, I don't remember saying that part.

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01:10:30.700 Did I mention that we care?

01:10:34.540 I need to know what we have no access to any of our data.

01:10:38.320 We have no access to our customers.

01:10:39.960 I don't even know if the person emailing me asking for a refund is a legitimate person

01:10:43.640 because they've taken all of that away from us and given us no access.

01:10:46.520 What is the legal strategy with these companies just providing zero notice or zero communication?

01:10:53.240 Is that calculated?

01:10:55.180 And not just that.

01:10:56.700 I don't have access to the information about who has my music.

01:11:02.340 So I have customers that currently have a license to my song.

01:11:07.880 I don't know who they are, where they are.

01:11:11.000 I don't know what they've spent.

01:11:12.580 I don't know if they have my money.

01:11:14.020 A lack of access to this information puts me in a very difficult position business-wise

01:11:18.020 in dealing with my copyright rights and my obligations to my customers and those holding

01:11:23.200 licenses.

01:11:23.880 I mean, this is a problem that confronts so many creators of content.

01:11:28.460 And let's face it, you don't go – no one's going to Bandcamp or Twitter or Facebook or

01:11:36.100 any of these platforms just because the platforms are interesting.

01:11:40.900 They're going there to see content.

01:11:43.380 They're going there and these platforms make money because people create content and

01:11:48.100 they put it on and they host it.

01:11:50.940 The problems with respect to this industry – and I was in a debate earlier this week

01:11:57.220 and I'll reiterate what I said there about this at UNC Law School – is you could not

01:12:06.000 run businesses in any other industry that I'm aware of where you engage in this kind of

01:12:13.380 bait and switch behavior where – let's just use Twitter because it's an example that I'm

01:12:21.440 most intimately familiar with – where you say, for example, we're the free speech wing

01:12:27.060 of the free speech party when Vijaya Gade says in a blog post in July of 2018, we do not shadow

01:12:35.240 ban.

01:12:35.900 We do not discriminate on the basis of political ideology or viewpoint.

01:12:39.420 When you have Jack Dorsey the following month reiterate the same thing on Sean Hannity's

01:12:45.260 show to a national audience.

01:12:47.700 And yet, as the Twitter files have shown, that's exactly what they were engaging in.

01:12:52.520 I have a question.

01:12:56.300 If you are a pizza restaurant, can you arbitrarily deny service to anyone for any reason?

01:13:07.480 Well, I think the answer to that would be no.

01:13:11.260 Those are places of public accommodation.

01:13:15.820 Go ahead.

01:13:16.660 Well, the reason I asked – and to clarify, a lot of businesses say we reserve the right

01:13:20.800 to refuse service to anyone.

01:13:22.640 But I have to wonder if a public accommodation opens its doors to the public and says anyone

01:13:27.260 is welcome to come in.

01:13:28.720 You come in.

01:13:30.500 You order a piece of pizza.

01:13:32.100 You quietly sit down.

01:13:33.300 And then they walk up to you and say, you get out right now.

01:13:37.040 Is that something a public accommodation can just do?

01:13:40.180 No.

01:13:40.500 I think they might be able to do it.

01:13:43.060 I mean, they could do it and they'd be at litigation risk.

01:13:48.400 I mean, if they came up to you, particularly if you're a member of a protected class, you

01:13:52.900 might have a claim for race, sex, or a form of protected class discrimination.

01:13:58.940 All right.

01:13:59.100 Well, let's say a mixed-race person comes and sits down at a pizza restaurant, says

01:14:03.260 nothing, insults no one, eats pizza.

01:14:05.240 And then the white owners walk up and say, you're not welcome to be here. 0.87

01:14:09.240 Get out.

01:14:10.360 Then I think that person would have potentially a viable claim for racial discrimination.

01:14:16.040 So it sounds like ban can't ban me for being a mixed-race person.

01:14:19.680 Well, they're going to say, right, they're going to say that they're not a place of public

01:14:22.940 accommodation.

01:14:23.760 The platforms, and I think there have been efforts to try to loop the platforms in as

01:14:29.340 places of accommodation.

01:14:30.820 But let's get, I mean, they're going to say, they're also going to say, is Section 230

01:14:36.720 trumps any, right?

01:14:39.520 No, no, please.

01:14:40.380 Okay, absolutely.

01:14:41.220 I absolutely do think that one of the components of the removal was my mixed-race status.

01:14:47.140 I mean, the people who put out these, we watched one of these videos, it's all white people. 0.94

01:14:51.100 It's clearly all white. 0.57

01:14:51.800 They clearly have an issue with the fact, because, I mean, these people, Derek Bell, for

01:14:55.960 instance, has advocated for segregation.

01:14:58.460 Well, mixed-race people are clearly at odds with that ideology. 0.92

01:15:02.200 So Derek Bell, the critical race theorist, argues that black people were better off with

01:15:06.200 their own economy, which is wrong, in my opinion.

01:15:08.200 The critical race theory idea is that before the end of segregation, black people made more

01:15:14.680 money, they provided service for themselves.

01:15:17.060 He thinks that schools should remain segregated, and these people likely share these views.

01:15:21.400 Now, they've said nothing to me, but I think that actually makes sense as to why they actually

01:15:27.720 removed my account.

01:15:29.020 I can't speak for anybody else.

01:15:30.560 But here I am, breaking no rules, minding my own business, just some mixed-race dude making 1.00

01:15:34.220 music, and they delete my account, I think there's a racial component to this, and if

01:15:40.440 they want to argue that they have a Section 230 right to be racist, I would love for them

01:15:44.860 to tell the court and the world that, in fact, it doesn't matter whether or not we are, we're

01:15:50.340 allowed to be.

01:15:51.320 I'll say okay to that, fine, I guess.

01:15:53.420 If the law allows them to ban me for being mixed-race, then I would love for everyone to 0.95

01:15:58.200 know that.

01:15:58.580 That was actually a question, I believe, that the court posed to Twitter during our

01:16:02.500 hearing, in Berenson versus Twitter.

01:16:05.900 Could you discriminate, could you kick somebody off on the basis of race?

01:16:11.900 And I don't, there wasn't a clear answer from Twitter in that regard.

01:16:18.080 Bryson Gray's a black man.

01:16:19.400 They banned him.

01:16:21.360 I think we're not seeing a pattern of behavior.

01:16:23.400 Yeah, I, you know, I don't know without looking at all the facts, but again, I mean,

01:16:31.240 They're not going to argue that black man is racist, right?

01:16:34.140 There's no reason to abandon.

01:16:35.460 But setting the, you know, setting the racial component to the side, just from a pure contract

01:16:40.880 theory perspective, the hypothetical that you present, right?

01:16:45.920 You come in, you're eating your pizza, you've relied on a public representation, a sign on

01:16:54.560 the front of the door that says, all are welcome here, right?

01:16:57.960 You walk in, you're enjoying your slice, but mid-bite, you're told to get out.

01:17:06.560 Is there a contract problem there?

01:17:09.140 Maybe.

01:17:09.540 I actually, I would say so.

01:17:11.100 I think a better example would be the pizza argument has a metaphor, has an issue in the

01:17:18.080 scale of monetary value involved.

01:17:22.980 So with this band camp thing, we're talking about tens of thousands of dollars and tens

01:17:26.680 of thousands of customers.

01:17:27.620 So this would be more like, I go to a mall, and I spend thousands of dollars renting out

01:17:35.060 a space, creating a pizza shop, having a bunch of customers come in, and then one day

01:17:40.560 abruptly, the owner of the mall pulls down the gate, locks it shut, and says, get the 0.99

01:17:44.660 fuck out. 0.96

01:17:45.700 And I'm like, for what? 1.00

01:17:46.920 And then he has security escort out of the building.

01:17:48.960 I have no access to any of my assets.

01:17:51.160 I have no access to, I don't know who's got my pizza.

01:17:54.220 I don't know.

01:17:54.680 What does it say when you try to log in?

01:17:56.140 Nothing.

01:17:56.380 It says this account doesn't exist.

01:17:57.620 Okay, so what is this strategy I'm trying to get at of nothing, no communication, no

01:18:03.980 reason?

01:18:05.140 Like, that has to be an intention.

01:18:07.120 Are they trying not to have a paper trail?

01:18:07.580 For all I know, they're giving my song away for free now.

01:18:09.880 Like, is it intentionally trying to limit communication because that reduces their exposure in a certain

01:18:15.580 way?

01:18:15.960 Most companies are going to say a minimal amount, right?

01:18:21.960 Sure.

01:18:22.620 Right?

01:18:23.100 I mean, it's just in their interest to do that.

01:18:27.240 But it seems like sometimes Twitter will ban people, or, you know, old Twitter would ban

01:18:31.140 people just out of nowhere and, like, it's gone versus there actually being a strike come

01:18:37.100 through an email.

01:18:38.100 Same with YouTube.

01:18:38.620 Like, sometimes people just, it's just gone versus other times.

01:18:41.980 Well, I think the lack of information makes them more at fault because the mall analogy

01:18:50.680 makes more sense.

01:18:51.440 I don't know where my assets are.

01:18:53.300 I don't know who they've distributed them to.

01:18:56.300 They do not have the copyright on this music to give it to people I am not aware of.

01:19:01.600 We track who has a license to my intellectual property.

01:19:05.800 They have severed that.

01:19:07.180 And for all I know, they're withholding my money.

01:19:09.400 They've not told us.

01:19:10.140 And they're withholding our information as to who they have given this music to.

01:19:15.280 There may be people who do not have a right to have that song.

01:19:17.600 They're distributing it.

01:19:18.060 This is copyright infringement.

01:19:19.280 They're hosting my song on their platform without my consent.

01:19:22.580 So we got a big problem here.

01:19:23.980 And is your name still, is your name, Tim Pool, still?

01:19:29.060 Okay.

01:19:29.180 So if you go to TimCast.Bandcamp, it just says Tim, let's say like TimCast Chicago or

01:19:34.060 something.

01:19:34.700 But people have told me that when they go into their account, they can see the song,

01:19:38.920 which means they have my copyrighted information on their platform without my consent.

01:19:43.620 And they're trading on your name.

01:19:45.420 Yes, absolutely.

01:19:46.480 They're monetizing that.

01:19:47.840 So if they wanted to ban it outright, they'd have to eliminate that content from the platform.

01:19:51.580 The reason they didn't, in my opinion, because then they would have tens of thousands

01:19:55.260 of arbitration and litigation claims against those who use the platform in the first place.

01:19:58.420 They can't be allowed to do this.

01:20:00.760 This is a clear, clear violation of all of the rights of all parties involved.

01:20:05.960 Well, and look, and again, unfortunately, it's not an isolated case.

01:20:12.720 I mean, these companies are very powerful.

01:20:17.420 And again, I mean, the general principles that would apply to businesses, and I represent

01:20:24.580 men and women across the country who have to deal with legal issues and claims against

01:20:30.660 their businesses that are, you know, in many ways frivolous or without foundation.

01:20:38.640 And yet you've got the reliance interest that you're talking about here and the investment

01:20:46.620 that you've made in building these brands and others have made on these platforms, having

01:20:51.180 the rug unceremoniously pulled out from under them, in some cases with no explanation whatsoever.

01:20:57.420 We have tremendous monetary damages in this regard.

01:20:59.580 Tremendous.

01:21:00.040 Well, and the other thing, I'm glad you brought that up.

01:21:02.960 The other thing that you'll see is these platforms with their one-sided terms of service

01:21:07.560 will say you're limited.

01:21:09.500 For example, I believe Twitter's terms of service still limit damages to $200 on the

01:21:14.360 basis of any legal claim that you can make.

01:21:18.700 But they can't stand.

01:21:19.600 And that would be an argument.

01:21:23.860 That's unconscionable and should be invalid.

01:21:26.400 And there have been so many people.

01:21:27.800 People need to understand this about law.

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01:22:55.820 For some reason, I think a lot of people think that the law, it's like the judge looks at

01:23:02.740 a piece of paper and goes, whoa, this piece of paper says $200.

01:23:05.880 Sorry.

01:23:06.640 The judge can be like, not only am I going to award you $200,000, bailiff, arrest the defendant.

01:23:13.200 And they're like, what?

01:23:14.260 The judge can do it.

01:23:15.680 The judge can be like, I'm going to be imposing a daily fine of X amount of dollars on you.

01:23:19.000 And you're like, how can the judge, judges have the like, judge, my point is more so that's

01:23:23.740 not necessarily going to happen.

01:23:24.680 It's that judges are human beings with a lot of discretionary power.

01:23:29.220 And so there's like, watch, you ever watch Yellowstone?

01:23:33.240 Yeah.

01:23:33.780 I have.

01:23:34.040 In the show, there's a, spoiler alerts, there's a woman, and again, spoiler alerts, a woman 1.00

01:23:40.620 gets arrested for assaulting a cop.

01:23:42.520 She's an activist. 0.55

01:23:43.780 She gets a plea agreement from the prosecutor saying you'll get like, you know, a few months

01:23:47.880 and a slap on the wrist, go home.

01:23:49.360 So she agrees to plead guilty.

01:23:51.620 And the judge says, my understanding is the prosecution has offered you a deal.

01:23:56.080 This is what the deal would be in exchange for a guilty plea.

01:23:58.600 And she goes, yes, your honor.

01:23:59.380 He goes, do you plead guilty?

01:24:00.380 He goes, yes, I do.

01:24:01.100 And then he takes his glasses off and goes, okay, I'm sentencing you to 14 years in prison

01:24:06.820 because you've now pled guilty.

01:24:08.320 And she's like, wait, what?

01:24:09.500 And he's like, this agreement means nothing to me.

01:24:11.240 I'm the judge.

01:24:12.240 Done.

01:24:12.740 Bangs a gavel.

01:24:13.400 And she like freaks out and she ends up going to jail for a long time. 1.00

01:24:16.800 And then she gets out of it.

01:24:18.440 Well, she gets pardoned a year later.

01:24:20.000 Yeah.

01:24:20.400 But the point is this.

01:24:22.220 If Twitter or any other company is like, you can only sue for $200.

01:24:27.320 A judge can just laugh and be like, nice try.

01:24:30.040 End of story.

01:24:30.480 Well, yeah.

01:24:30.900 I mean, look, it depends on what state you're litigating in.

01:24:33.440 It depends on what the case law is.

01:24:35.060 It depends on the composition of the appellate court.

01:24:36.760 Let me also explain something to you.

01:24:38.720 We sell ads on Timcast IRL.

01:24:42.680 These ads are not cheap.

01:24:44.480 Not only do we have a high viewership, we also have a very, very high response rate to

01:24:49.460 our ads, which gives us a premium offering.

01:24:51.080 In, I would estimate 50 of our videos, I ran sponsor spots for Timcast Music, which is a separate

01:25:01.060 company.

01:25:02.180 Those sponsor spots have a value.

01:25:04.340 Or I could just say we allocated within our company advertising space to promote this music in lieu of selling other sponsor spots.

01:25:15.240 That's lost revenue because they've done this.

01:25:18.400 And my point is those videos still exist and will always exist and I cannot change them where they say go to bandcamp.com.

01:25:27.080 That means those videos are promoting their website on my platform and I can't get rid of those unless I take all the videos and delete them all.

01:25:35.540 That was a good faith effort on our part to promote our product on a platform where we have abided by all the rules.

01:25:43.100 Now, they are getting free promotion despite abruptly and arbitrarily cutting us off.

01:25:49.840 Yeah.

01:25:50.500 And again, I mean, it is the question that I asked during the debate on Wednesday.

01:25:56.000 What is it that is so special about these platforms that make it so it's inconceivable to so many people that they should be held to the public statements they make with respect to free speech and inclusivity and the rest of their commitments to social justice or whatever?

01:26:18.740 I mean, it's particularly interesting in the context of California because California was a leading pioneer in the legal world with respect to innovating doctrines like strict products liability and consumer protection across many different industries.

01:26:37.160 I mean, just Justice Roger Traynor on the California Supreme Court was somebody that I was taught in law school to revere for developing these these these these doctrines that kind of tied the hands of large corporations.

01:26:51.600 And yet here we are in 2023 and Traynor was working in the 40s and the 50s and the 60s.

01:26:59.040 But the many people in the legal world and attorneys are unwilling to apply Traynor's principles to big tech.

01:27:07.500 And the question I asked on Wednesday Wednesday and I'll ask it again is what is so special about big tech?

01:27:12.780 Why why did they get in many ways a pass on the same scrutiny that would apply to somebody that's running a pizza restaurant?

01:27:19.420 Right. Or who is who is who is running, you know, a long care service?

01:27:24.420 Right. Well, and it's bad faith. It's I mean, because like they're using 230, but 230 actually says that it has to be good faith.

01:27:31.180 And but but how do you you can't it also has to be voluntary to actions taken voluntarily in good faith.

01:27:38.760 Sorry, I cut you off. No, no. I mean, I just I think that that language is is very difficult to talk about.

01:27:47.100 Well, well, well, right. And now we know. Right. And I cited the case of Dr. Bostom.

01:27:52.880 We know that they subjectively in bad faith kept him off the platform, even though they internally concluded he had not committed five.

01:28:03.640 Well, this is bad. Right. By band. That's bad. It's it's it's the same thing with band.

01:28:07.200 Yeah. Right. Like if they want to make an argument. So I I I I'll try to avoid bring anybody else into it.

01:28:16.320 If they want to make an argument that if a creator has music that's offensive, they get banned.

01:28:21.220 They have an argument and say, look, it's disruptive. We don't want hate speech. It violates our rules.

01:28:25.820 None of my songs do that. What one the three songs we had make no make no direct references to anything.

01:28:33.200 The lyrics in one song are, you know, a general's waking up in the morning, calling his soldiers to gun down rebels.

01:28:39.240 It's just like a generic revolution story. One song is, did you know you left me there staying at the heartache in my soul?

01:28:45.040 Completely generic love song. One song is we follow we're shadows of the current enterprise institutions made to control your minds inside breeding, concocting all the lies.

01:28:53.680 No direct references, no insults, no invective, no way in any way.

01:28:58.320 Did any of these songs break the rules? They deleted the whole account.

01:29:01.780 So there's there's there's literally no argument other than it was a political attack against us.

01:29:08.120 I'm wondering if if if beyond just everything we've stated, if there is just simply put, you cannot terminate contracts abruptly like this.

01:29:18.860 And especially when when you add on like they'll make the argument they can.

01:29:23.680 I'll make the argument they are retaining my copyrighted information without the right to do so.

01:29:28.600 So they're they're going to have to make a decision of whether or not to reinstate our account or remove this from their platform entirely.

01:29:35.600 But that's creates a problem for all the people who've paid for the song who now have claims against them for removing something they've paid for.

01:29:41.320 Because I have I have no access to those people. I have no idea who they are.

01:29:44.320 Yeah, that's typically not how de-platforming works either.

01:29:46.820 Typically, when something comes down, it comes down for everybody.

01:29:49.200 This is like an odd case.

01:29:50.820 Well, so either either.

01:29:52.260 That's a great point.

01:29:53.180 So I my understanding at first was with the with the page gone, the music was gone.

01:29:59.000 But we started hearing from people that they still have access to the song, which opens up a whole other can of worms.

01:30:04.400 They can't have it both ways.

01:30:06.100 They can't ban me from the platform, but keep my music on.

01:30:09.160 That makes no sense.

01:30:09.880 And your name.

01:30:10.860 Yeah, absolutely.

01:30:11.580 Your name up there.

01:30:12.760 They're now they're they're now profiting off my likeness while stripping me of my rights to the fees they owe me.

01:30:18.060 So for every I would argue that for every day, for every minute, my name is on their platform.

01:30:24.460 Assuming it is, they are benefiting financially from my name without my permission.

01:30:29.700 By the way, anyone listening who does have access to the song, send screenshots, you know, or, you know.

01:30:34.880 And if they don't and if you've lost access, they have now seized from you a licensing right that you've had.

01:30:40.940 I don't think Bandcamp can do this.

01:30:42.420 I think by the nature of their industry, they have created a binding circumstance that cannot be terminated, not without mutual consent.

01:30:53.060 Yeah, this is a highly unique case.

01:30:54.440 There are three parties.

01:30:55.460 There's the music buyer, the music exchange and the individual.

01:30:59.100 We all have rights in this.

01:31:01.480 They cannot just sever the rights of two of the parties involved, not without the agreement.

01:31:06.640 I think.

01:31:08.300 Yeah, because the financial transactions are not as common.

01:31:12.160 Where, like, a product was purchased.

01:31:13.740 Most deplatforming is like, okay, your content was up there, but people hadn't paid for it.

01:31:19.160 This is really fascinating.

01:31:21.160 I think we're going to need some precedent on this one because we're entering an interesting area of laws that pertains to the subscription economy.

01:31:29.220 We used to buy songs.

01:31:30.400 We owned them physically.

01:31:31.080 If you owned the CD, you didn't own the music, you owned the copy, that one individual copy, and a right to have that song in your possession.

01:31:40.360 No one from Best Buy could go to your house, knock on the door, and say, give me that CD.

01:31:44.800 The owner of the copyright, you know, Dire Straits, who made the music, couldn't come to you and say, we're revoking that.

01:31:52.560 They can't do it.

01:31:53.600 You can't even force a refund.

01:31:54.960 That sale happened.

01:31:56.320 But we're now in an interesting period where music is digital and the information persists, which means I do not allow Bandcamp to keep my name on their platform.

01:32:05.000 But that means they got tens of thousands of customers who are going to say, I paid for this music and I own the license to it.

01:32:10.380 Well, I don't give Bandcamp the right to host it.

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01:33:41.380 So Bandcamp's going to have to send out a notice to all those people saying, download the song now because we're not allowed to host it.

01:33:45.380 Then those people are going to complain and say, no, I paid for the Bandcamp player with this song on it, not just for the song because you guaranteed me that this is going to get really interesting.

01:33:54.940 And they're going to rely, as most of these platforms do, on their terms of service on which their attorneys had eyes.

01:34:02.700 And, of course, consumers don't have the opportunity to bargain and provide input on, which is why courts—

01:34:09.920 But that's fine.

01:34:10.920 But I think we're entering a period where the courts must rule on how this will be done because the platform can't argue.

01:34:19.220 We have the right to sell you a product and then deny you that product.

01:34:24.060 That's a consumer rights violation immediately.

01:34:27.260 And you make a good point about the first sale doctrine because that's what you're talking about in the context of copyright.

01:34:33.500 You have the CD.

01:34:34.280 And, yeah, I buy a video game and, you know, Best Buy or a CD, a music CD, and Best Buy isn't going to come and repossess that.

01:34:47.540 Right.

01:34:47.880 Right.

01:34:48.620 But we've gone to a completely different model now in music and video games and the entertainment industry where you're renting it.

01:34:56.820 You're licensing it.

01:34:58.000 Let's put it this way.

01:34:59.040 Let's say there's a music—a big electronic store that sells CDs.

01:35:04.060 Mm-hmm.

01:35:04.620 And they have a thing where you can come and hang out and listen to music.

01:35:09.640 Someone goes into the store and they buy my song, and it's in the store.

01:35:14.520 And in order to listen to it, they have to go to that store and press play.

01:35:17.640 The store then says, we will no longer allow you, Tim Pool, for no reason to be in here.

01:35:21.960 We will no longer pay you any fees.

01:35:23.920 We will no longer sell your song.

01:35:26.320 But people are still allowed to come in and listen to it.

01:35:28.840 That's the equivalent.

01:35:30.220 And it's like, whoa, whoa, hold on.

01:35:31.900 I'm not—you can't play my song in your store to make money.

01:35:34.760 People—so understand this.

01:35:36.680 There will be people who are like, I don't like that band Tim Pool, but it's the only way to access the song now through their platform because I can't buy it anymore.

01:35:45.780 So I'll keep using their platform and buy other music.

01:35:48.200 They're effectively—people will come into the store and be like, I'd go to a different store, but the only place to get the Tim Pool music is here because he's been banned.

01:35:58.200 Like, they're using me to make money.

01:35:59.920 They don't want to lose those customers.

01:36:01.220 And those customers are going to keep buying—might keep buying stuff, too, and they know that.

01:36:05.000 They're profiting off of my name and likeness without my permission.

01:36:07.420 Well, and in your hypo, right, people would be entering into that store and they might think that you endorse the content, right?

01:36:17.700 There's an aspect, and that's trademark law.

01:36:21.180 The term is consumer confusion that you endorse or you're affiliated with an entity or a platform that has unceremoniously kept you off and removed you.

01:36:36.760 Now, again, this is under the premise that the music is still there because we don't know.

01:36:41.660 My assumption was it was gone.

01:36:43.360 And I said, all the people bought the song and I don't have access to it.

01:36:45.400 And then we got some messages saying, no, actually, the song is still in my library.

01:36:48.620 If that's the case, it's even worse.

01:36:50.480 There's no circumstance where it works for them.

01:36:52.000 Let's get evidence of that sent over.

01:36:53.980 But it doesn't even matter.

01:36:55.200 Let's operate under the assumption they removed the song from everyone's libraries.

01:36:58.680 So they just swindled all these people and stole their money.

01:37:02.720 They took a cut of all that money.

01:37:04.860 I don't know who these people are because they banned us.

01:37:07.380 I don't have access to that customer base anymore.

01:37:09.440 So if they remove the music, they have convinced people to buy a product, take it a percentage, and then deleted it.

01:37:15.400 Now, that's theft, isn't it?

01:37:17.000 Or is that fraud?

01:37:18.240 Well, I think the terms are different now with this kind of digital leasing of media compared to buying the physical product.

01:37:24.100 Like the actual contract has changed.

01:37:26.140 But if I said, Bill, give me a dollar and I'll give you that pen.

01:37:29.220 You say, OK, and then I don't give you the pen.

01:37:30.900 Then what?

01:37:32.000 Breach a contract, right?

01:37:35.000 But to Bill's point.

01:37:37.280 Is it a buy button on the Bandcamp page?

01:37:40.020 Yeah.

01:37:40.300 Yeah.

01:37:40.820 OK.

01:37:41.240 Yeah, you buy.

01:37:41.760 It's 69 cents for the song.

01:37:43.280 And people could pay whatever they wanted.

01:37:45.440 Yeah.

01:37:45.680 The word buy matters because there's a difference between buying and renting.

01:37:50.100 Well, I think it's buy.

01:37:51.400 Well, and the expectations of consumers, too, in terms of what they thought they'd be getting when they clicked buy, were they thinking that they were walking into a virtual record store and walking out with that proverbial CD?

01:38:10.300 Or did they think they were buying, you know, two blocks of fine print about a license that's limited?

01:38:22.360 People thought they were buying a song and access to my community page because people were commenting and talking about the music.

01:38:31.240 So this is what Bandcamp's value proposition is.

01:38:33.380 It's not just you're buying a song.

01:38:35.980 You're getting access to Bandcamp.

01:38:38.200 To a community.

01:38:39.120 Right.

01:38:39.340 And they've denied that from people.

01:38:41.220 So let me see what Bandcamp says when you.

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01:40:12.000 I'll pull up a random song.

01:40:17.200 Actually, it doesn't seem easy enough to do.

01:40:20.760 Let's just do this.

01:40:21.640 Let's do a little search for TimCast.

01:40:26.080 Oh, also, there's covers of my music on the platform, which I find fascinating.

01:40:32.740 All right, here's a random guy.

01:40:35.220 By track, it says.

01:40:36.280 By track.

01:40:36.880 Yeah.

01:40:37.640 Yep.

01:40:37.880 Do you think that there are going to be changes to 230 on the horizon?

01:40:42.560 Or do you think that 230 should stay?

01:40:45.080 Well, I mean, I think that in theory, the statute really, in some ways, it codifies the common law rule that a distributor of content.

01:41:02.080 Okay, so let's set 230 to the side for a second.

01:41:05.720 Yeah.

01:41:05.860 If you are a bookstore and you are publishing newspapers, the general rule or any other content, and let's say that some of the content in those books was defamatory.

01:41:22.380 The general common law rule was that unless you had specific notice that it was defamatory, that you as a distributor could not be held liable for defamation because you were just distributing.

01:41:34.000 That's just the line that we drew as a common law rule.

01:41:37.480 We get to 230 because of a case called Stratton-Oakmont versus Prodigy that was decided in 1995, which, interestingly enough, cast, I think, as the plaintiff Jordan Belfort of Wolf of Wall Street, they sue Prodigy for defamation.

01:41:54.120 And Prodigy defended itself by analogizing itself to the bookstore.

01:42:03.380 Hey, we don't moderate.

01:42:05.480 We're not responsible for third-party content.

01:42:08.420 And the case should be dismissed.

01:42:10.020 But the judge said no.

01:42:11.740 But most people don't pull the opinion and actually study and see why he said no.

01:42:17.440 And the reason he said no is because Prodigy specifically said and analogized itself to a newspaper publicly.

01:42:26.120 It said, we're creating a family-friendly environment.

01:42:29.420 We're moderating content.

01:42:31.080 We are supervising and policing the space.

01:42:34.300 And so the judge in that case said, OK, we're going to hold you to what you said.

01:42:39.320 And we're going to find that you could be held potentially liable for defamation.

01:42:43.820 And, of course, that creates interest in Congress, on Capitol Hill.

01:42:52.360 All of a sudden, the Republican Revolution Congress in 1996 gives us Section 230.

01:42:57.500 You know, I've sarcastically said on Wednesday, let's not pretend that this came out because, you know, there was a grassroots America.

01:43:06.400 Ordinary Americans were pushing for this bill.

01:43:08.600 We all know how it came about.

01:43:10.360 Lobbyists were involved.

01:43:11.740 K Street was involved.

01:43:13.280 And all of a sudden, we have Section 230.

01:43:16.340 So I don't – I think the law has been misread.

01:43:20.520 Who won the Stratton Oakmont prodigy?

01:43:23.000 I think it ultimately was settled.

01:43:25.880 That's crazy, isn't it?

01:43:26.900 People don't know that.

01:43:27.820 It was the Wolf of Wall Street.

01:43:28.860 When you first said it, I was like, I know that.

01:43:31.180 The Wolf of Wall Street guy was – Belfort, again, was involved in that case.

01:43:35.760 My argument has been that what should have happened – and I say this as somebody who's, you know, more of a classical constitutional right-leaning person – that let the courts decide on a case-by-case basis.

01:43:53.260 Let the law develop in this space.

01:43:55.720 Instead of having a one-size-fits-all solution to the problem imposed by Congress, let state courts, let individual states, you know, police this issue, handle and resolve individual cases.

01:44:08.880 And as I said on Wednesday, you know, as a – I suppose I would identify myself as a conservative.

01:44:15.760 I don't think it's a requirement of the American right or the reason for the existence of the American right to create an environment for businesses where they don't have to buy a 50-state survey and figure out how they're going to comply with different laws in different states.

01:44:29.780 I mean that's how it is already.

01:44:32.380 Like you run a business.

01:44:34.360 I mean, Bill, you probably know this.

01:44:35.400 You have to.

01:44:35.420 You've got to do all the different registrations.

01:44:36.640 Well, that's right.

01:44:38.880 But big tech doesn't.

01:44:40.260 I will say, without 230, I think it would be a ton more work for platforms.

01:44:45.540 Like it would be –

01:44:46.180 It just needs to be operated in good faith.

01:44:48.640 Yeah.

01:44:48.920 These businesses are not operating in good faith under 230.

01:44:51.140 They're exploiting it for personal gain.

01:44:53.160 Yeah.

01:44:53.340 So we need enforcement.

01:44:54.980 But with that being said, we were running behind today, so we'll need to wind it down if we want to get this one up in time.

01:44:59.720 So if you guys have any final thoughts, we'll wrap it up.

01:45:02.620 Thanks for having me.

01:45:03.680 Again, James Lawrence at Envisage Law.

01:45:06.220 You can follow me on Jay Lawrence at JayLawrenceNC on Twitter.

01:45:11.940 I would also ask – I'm the attorney for Douglas Mackey and represent him and his – excuse me, represent his defense fund.

01:45:20.600 And would ask people to learn more about his case, which has significant First Amendment implications at memedefensefund.com.

01:45:27.800 Yeah, yeah, thanks for having us, man.

01:45:30.720 Find us at minds.com, M-I-N-D-S.com, or on the app stores.

01:45:34.900 Or you can get the app directly at minds.com slash mobile.

01:45:37.820 And keep an eye on how the case comes, and we'll keep you updated.

01:45:41.440 I mean, we'll update it, obviously.

01:45:42.580 Yeah.

01:45:43.120 All right, everybody.

01:45:44.300 Thanks for hanging out.

01:45:45.080 Sorry this one was a little short today.

01:45:46.280 We're running behind, and we can only do what we can do.

01:45:49.380 So thanks for the support.

01:45:50.960 Share the show if you really like it, and we'll see you all next time.

01:45:52.860 We'll see you next time.

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The Culture War - Tim Pool - March 24, 2023

The Culture War #5 - Tim Pool, Bill Ottman SUE California, MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT

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