The Culture War #5 - Tim Pool, Bill Ottman SUE California, MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 46 minutes
Words per Minute
177.82077
Summary
Bill Ottman, founder of Minds, joins us to talk about California's censorship law and why we should fight it. We talk about why we're suing California, why we think it's unfair, and why it's bad for business. We also discuss why we don't think California should be able to deplatform users who don't like the way they're being treated and why they should be compensated for the amount of censorship they're required to submit to the California Attorney General's Office regarding hate speech, racism, misinformation, and disinformation on social media platforms like Reddit, and other platforms that require moderation at some level of their terms of service (SSO). We also talk about how much money is being made by these companies and why these companies should be held accountable for what they do and why California should not be allowed to make unjust policies that hurt their bottom line. We're in no way affiliated with the Bill Simmons Podcast, the Ringer, or Bill Simmons, but we're a culture warrior and we're fighting censorship and censorship. We're fighting California's anti-free speech laws because we're culture warriors and we believe it's time to fight censorship. If you like what we're doing, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and tell a friend about it! and tell us what you think about it in the comments section below! We'll be listening to the show and spreading the word to your friends and family about what we said on the show! Tweet us your thoughts on this episode! and we'll get back to you in next week's episode with a new episode of the podcast! :) Timestamps: 3:00 - What's your thoughts? 4: What do you think of California's new censorship law? 5:30 - What would you like to see California do better? 6:40 - Why California should do more of this? 7:15 - What are you concerned about censorship? 8:00 9:00 -- What's the worst thing California should California do? 11:30 -- How do you want to see more of California do more? 12:30 13:40 -- Why do you like it? 15:00 | What do we have a better solution? 16:30 | What are we suing California? 17:40 | Why California need to be more progressive? 18:00 // Is there a better way to be woke?
Transcript
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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
00:02:28.040
Yeah, how come these tech companies are such, I'll try to avoid swearing, but why are they such
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
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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
00:02:58.580
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,
00:03:08.740
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
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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
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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
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January 1st of this year. And the reporting requirement will kick in, in January 1st of
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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.
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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,
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that is just like plainly. And I don't understand how they thought this would fly in the first place.
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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
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hereby impose speech regulations on corporations? That's just a violation of the first amendment
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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
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regarding, uh, platforms and, and define platforms very, very broadly in that, in that case, who, um,
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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,
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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
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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,
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which are fines that could amount up to $15,000 a day. If the, the platforms that are at issue do
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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,
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it's a burdensome regulation on private businesses who are now going to have to hire employees and,
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uh, and, and, and, and get staff together to, to Bill's point to create reporting on ambiguous
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terms, even if they could do the work. And it would be one thing if this law was just saying,
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listen, you have to have terms of service and you have to, you know, report it once in a while,
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but they chose to pick these six words or how that happened. Like it's, they're arbitrary. I mean,
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they're, well, they're very specifically chosen words, but they don't want, why don't they choose
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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
00:11:32.860
guys are like, what? And then the woman drops the barbell or whatever on her foot and she's
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.
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They're weaponizing the word hate. Right. And, and, and, and to return to Bill's point,
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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.
00:15:26.520
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,
00:16:12.840
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.
00:17:37.580
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.
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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,
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.
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?
00:21:52.180
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.
00:22:07.860
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,
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
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When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins
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Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you.
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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.
00:30:51.080
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?
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
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
00:31:21.860
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.
00:31:58.060
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.
00:32:17.720
That is blocked. That is enjoined, uh, right now.
00:32:22.900
That's great though. Fantastic work to whoever.
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
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
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
00:34:09.480
than it is to just tell them to screw off. Well, it's interesting watching Elon kind of navigate,
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
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.
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.
00:45:54.800
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.
00:47:13.500
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
00:47:58.320
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,
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
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
00:53:49.840
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-
00:54:10.900
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,
00:54:46.720
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
00:55:06.240
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,
00:55:27.300
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.
00:55:36.040
I mean, he actually called out Elon when the Twitter files were first starting. He was
00:55:41.160
like, you should just publish absolutely everything that exists.
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.
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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.
01:00:33.820
Yeah, make another one. Make Twitter blue, make Twitter silver, make Twitter gold, make Twitter
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
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
01:05:25.600
and everything you hold dear if you play stupid fucking games. And if it means the end of my
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.
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
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I need to know what we have no access to any of our data.
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?
01:10:56.700
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.
01:11:14.020
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
01:11:23.880
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.
01:11:43.380
They're going there and these platforms make money because people create content and
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
01:12:35.900
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
01:12:47.700
And yet, as the Twitter files have shown, that's exactly what they were engaging in.
01:12:56.300
If you are a pizza restaurant, can you arbitrarily deny service to anyone for any reason?
01:13:16.660
Well, the reason I asked – and to clarify, a lot of businesses say we reserve the right
01:13:22.640
But I have to wonder if a public accommodation opens its doors to the public and says anyone
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?
01:13:43.060
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.
01:13:59.100
Well, let's say a mixed-race person comes and sits down at a pizza restaurant, says
01:14:05.240
And then the white owners walk up and say, you're not welcome to be here.
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
01:14:23.760
The platforms, and I think there have been efforts to try to loop the platforms in as
01:14:30.820
But let's get, I mean, they're going to say, they're also going to say, is Section 230
01:14:41.220
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.
01:14:51.800
They clearly have an issue with the fact, because, I mean, these people, Derek Bell, for
01:14:58.460
Well, mixed-race people are clearly at odds with that ideology.
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
01:15:17.060
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
01:15:30.560
But here I am, breaking no rules, minding my own business, just some mixed-race dude making
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
01:15:53.420
If the law allows them to ban me for being mixed-race, then I would love for everyone to
01:15:58.580
That was actually a question, I believe, that the court posed to Twitter during our
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.
01:16:21.360
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?
01:16:35.460
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.
01:17:11.100
I think a better example would be the pizza argument has a metaphor, has an issue in the
01:17:22.980
So with this band camp thing, we're talking about tens of thousands of dollars and tens
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
01:17:46.920
And then he has security escort out of the building.
01:17:51.160
I have no access to, I don't know who's got my pizza.
01:17:57.620
Okay, so what is this strategy I'm trying to get at of nothing, no communication, no
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
01:18:15.960
Most companies are going to say a minimal amount, 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
01:18:38.620
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
01:18:56.300
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.
01:19:07.180
And for all I know, they're withholding my money.
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.
01:19:19.280
They're hosting my song on their platform without my consent.
01:19:23.980
And is your name still, is your name, Tim Pool, still?
01:19:29.180
So if you go to TimCast.Bandcamp, it just says Tim, let's say like TimCast Chicago or
01:19:34.700
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.
01:19:47.840
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.
01:20:00.760
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.
01:20:17.420
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.
01:21:00.040
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
01:21:09.500
For example, I believe Twitter's terms of service still limit damages to $200 on the
01:21:30.560
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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.
01:23:06.640
The judge can be like, not only am I going to award you $200,000, bailiff, arrest the defendant.
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
01:23:24.680
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?
01:23:34.040
In the show, there's a, spoiler alerts, there's a woman, and again, spoiler alerts, a woman
01:23:43.780
She gets a plea agreement from the prosecutor saying you'll get like, you know, a few months
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.
01:24:01.100
And then he takes his glasses off and goes, okay, I'm sentencing you to 14 years in prison
01:24:09.500
And he's like, this agreement means nothing to me.
01:24:13.400
And she like freaks out and she ends up going to jail for a long time.
01:24:22.220
If Twitter or any other company is like, you can only sue for $200.
01:24:30.900
I mean, look, it depends on what state you're litigating in.
01:24:35.060
It depends on the composition of the appellate court.
01:24:44.480
Not only do we have a high viewership, we also have a very, very high response rate to
01:24:51.080
In, I would estimate 50 of our videos, I ran sponsor spots for Timcast Music, which is a separate
01:25:04.340
Or I could just say we allocated within our company advertising space to promote this music in lieu of selling other sponsor spots.
01:25:18.400
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.
01:25:50.500
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.
01:29:53.180
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.
01:30:06.100
They can't ban me from the platform, but keep my music on.
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.
01:30:42.420
I think by the nature of their industry, they have created a binding circumstance that cannot be terminated, not without mutual consent.
01:30:55.460
There's the music buyer, the music exchange and the individual.
01:31:01.480
They cannot just sever the rights of two of the parties involved, not without the agreement.
01:31:08.300
Yeah, because the financial transactions are not as common.
01:31:13.740
Most deplatforming is like, okay, your content was up there, but people hadn't paid for it.
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.
01:31:31.080
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.
01:31:56.320
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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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—
01:34:10.920
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.
01:34:34.280
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.
01:34:48.620
But we've gone to a completely different model now in music and video games and the entertainment industry where you're renting it.
01:34:59.040
Let's say there's a music—a big electronic store that sells CDs.
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.
01:35:26.320
But people are still allowed to come in and listen to it.
01:35:31.900
I'm not—you can't play my song in your store to make money.
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.
01:36:01.220
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?
01:36:21.180
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.
01:36:43.360
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.
01:36:50.480
There's no circumstance where it works for them.
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.
01:37:04.860
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.
01:37:18.240
Well, I think the terms are different now with this kind of digital leasing of media compared to buying the physical product.
01:37:26.140
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.
01:37:45.680
The word buy matters because there's a difference between buying and renting.
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.
01:38:45.060
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When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops.
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So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you.
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01:40:26.080
Oh, also, there's covers of my music on the platform, which I find fascinating.
01:40:37.880
Do you think that there are going to be changes to 230 on the horizon?
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.
01:41:05.860
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.
01:42:11.740
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.
01:42:34.300
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.
01:43:16.340
So I don't – I think the law has been misread.
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.
01:43:55.720
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.
01:44:35.420
You've got to do all the different registrations.
01:44:40.260
I will say, without 230, I think it would be a ton more work for platforms.
01:44:48.920
These businesses are not operating in good faith under 230.
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.
01:45:06.220
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.
01:45:30.720
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.
01:45:46.280
We're running behind, and we can only do what we can do.
01:45:50.960
Share the show if you really like it, and we'll see you all next time.