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NRA Complaint Takes Down 38,000 Websites (vice.com)
Sarah Jeong, reporting for Motherboard:38,000 websites hosted by the automated publishing service Surge went down today, after the National Rifle Association sent a legal notice over a parody website created by the Yes Men. A few days ago, the Yes Men released the parody video, "Share the Safety" -- announcing a supposed NRA program to deliver firearms into the hands of those too impoverished to afford guns. The opening frame of the video says "Paid for in part by the National Rifle Association of America with additional support from Smith & Wesson Holding Corporation." "Systemic poverty and dumb laws keep the urban poor unable to acquire life-saving firearms," says the video, which is available on YouTube. "That's why we at the NRA are teaming up with Smith & Wesson to share the safety.â The YouTube description includes a link to the "official" website, ShareTheSafety.org.
Actually there is a legit version: https://facebook.com/TheArmedCitizenProject/
The difference is that the parody is full of unconscious racism.
You have to realize what the Yes Men are. Their pranks are not just satire like you might find in the Onion. They are activists and they fully understand that they can get themselves arrested in some cases for the crap they pull. Their hoax about the Monsanto chemical disaster apology was definitely risky. They likely are fully aware of the fact that the NRA will take issue with this hoax. However, the Yes Men often rely on the fact that any litigation by the "victims" would result in even more attention to an uncomfortable topic, so they don't sue.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
I agree with the other posters that these videos are likely to cause confusion to the average viewer, and are probably in violation of trademark law. That said, the way to handle that is in the courts.
DCMA takedown requests only apply to copyright infringement, not trademark law. It is a violation of the law to use the DCMA this way, both according to the USPTOs guidelines(See B.4), and existing case law.
From the article, it is unknown whether their lawyers sent a DCMA request or a some other sort of cease and desist letter. But either way, Digitalocean had no legal obligation to take down the content, or any legal liability if they didn't take it down. The fact that they shutdown an entire service over a toothless complaint about one page on that service is unacceptable, and people should seriously reconsider doing business with them in the future.
> it is promoting arming black people using some kind of charity.... it will strike fear in the heart of NRA supporters.
There actually is a US government-sponsored nonprofit offering free guns to qualified citizens. It is called the Civilian Marksmanship Program. (http://thecmp.org) It's 113 years old this year. They don't restrict their giveaways by race. As for the NRA, I've never heard anything but positive noises from them about the program. So much for the NRA only supporting armed white guys.
> The asymmetric enforcement of second amendment rights is the core of NRA and its followers mission.
Point me to the position paper on their web site saying that.
I've been to NRA meetings. Down here in the southwest, we don't get so many "black" people at them, but we do get plenty of brown people. (Hispanics and Native Americans.) The table at the last event I attended was 50/50 Hispanic and white. As far as I can tell, the only color the NRA cares about is green.
> with fingers on the trigger can walk into departmental stores
NRA is against that.
It's their second rule of gun safety: keep your finger off the trigger until ready to shoot. You'll get kicked out of any well run event if you violate it. (http://training.nra.org/nra-gun-safety-rules.aspx)
> pick arguments with police officers,
1st amendment.
> insult the police
I see that regularly here on Slashdot, often highly rated.
> terrorize play grounds with impunity.
That's called brandishing, and it's illegal in all 50 states.
Plus there's the 1000 foot rule around school playgrounds. It's a federal felony if you carry inside that border and don't qualify for one of the few exceptions. And if you do qualify, you're obeying the law.
> black Americans are also citizens with full second amendment rights.
Damn straight. There is no human right restricted to only some citizens.
> if they exercise it, they will be shot by police without a second thought
[citation needed]
Oh, I'm sure you can find cases of legally armed black people getting shot by the cops, but if you actually go looking, you'll find Americans of all brown shades (including that shade we call "white") getting shot by cops without proper justification.
> if I fear for my life I have the right to kill" is accepted as a valid defense for police officers.
Wrong. There are 4 or 5 tests a defendant must pass in order to avoid a charge of manslaughter or murder, depending on where you are in the US. An imminent threat of grievous bodily harm or death is only one of them. Miss any of the 3 or 4 others and your case falls apart.
Andrew Branca (a constitutional law professor and 2nd Amendment expert) summarizes it nicely here: https://lawofselfdefense.com/t...
> This ad brings out the hypocrisy of the NRA followers
This NRA member wants Americans of all shades and creeds to exercise their 2nd Amendment right.
Better trim that broad brush down a bit.
> That is why NRA is acting swiftly.
The NRA is acting swiftly because this "ad" puts words in their mouth that you'll never read in their publications, nor hear in their leadership's speeches. It's basically a lie.
That paper isn't a research paper but a document describing the questions that need answered in future research studies.
It's a blueprint for how to proceed, not a research paper in it's own right.
The research agenda proposed in this report is intended as an initial—not a conclusive or all-encompassing—set of questions critical to developing the most effective policies to reduce the occurrence and impact of firearm-related violence in the United States. No single agency or research strategy can provide all the answers. This report focuses on the public health aspects of firearm violence; the committee expects that this research agenda will be integrated with research conducted from criminal justice and other perspectives to provide a much fuller knowledge base to underpin our nation’s approach to dealing with this very important set of societal issues.
So Guns and Ammo Magazine read an outline for a proposed line of questioning, and drew conclusions the outline itself doesn't even draw...because it doesn't even try.
Rather what it does is to point to other research efforts and their contradictory findings as a starting point for developing the questions that should be asked. And of the "research" quotes that G&A provides are cherry picked quotes from other studies referenced by the authors of the blueprint to illustrate previous, current, and ongoing research to illustrate which questions need asked.
Again: this is not a research paper.
This group performed no research (yet, or as of the publishing of this paper).
Ergo, this is not the result of the CDC research.
It's simply the first step, figuring out what questions to ask, in doing that research.
Nice try genius.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
That's not a citation that's "the executive director of the National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action" making the same claim without providing a citation.
One of the lead researchers employed in the CDC’s effort was quoted, stating “We’re going to systematically build the case that owning firearms causes deaths.” Another researcher said he envisioned a long-term campaign “to convince Americans that guns are, first and foremost, a public health menace.”
Is unsourced and unnamed making it rather difficult to confirm.
Some digging (which shouldn't be necessary since providing a citation is trivial) turns up http://dailycaller.com/2013/10... which in turn makes the claim:
Patrick O’Carroll, a CDC official involved in the “research,” wrote in the February 3, 1989, Journal of the American Medical Association: “We’re going to systematically build the case that owning firearms causes deaths.”
However the Feb 3 1989 issue of JAMA does not have an article in it authored by Patrick O'Carroll.
Yet more digging (which again should be unnecessary) shows that issue does have an article: Marsha F. Goldsmith, "Epidemiologists Aim at New Target: Health Risk of Handgun Proliferation," Journal of the American Medical Association vol. 261 no. 5, February 3, 1989, pp. 675-76 (http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=376136) - note citations are really easy to do. That article apparently quotes O'Carroll, however that itself it uncited so we have hearsay.
And then we do actually have something in writing from O'Carroll in JAMA, in July 1989. A letter to the editor claiming that he was misrepresented in the article above and didn't say any such thing: Patrick O'Carroll, "CDC's Approach to Firearm Injuries," Journal of the American Medical Association vol. 262 no. 3, July 21, 1989, pp.348-349.
So do you have an actual citation? Note they are easy to give, see the two I gave above.