Fair though to hesitate over donating if you believe that your donations are not going to go towards the valueable core mission, and instead be misdirected to ill advised legal crusades.
Extreme hyperbolic example, and to be clear I am not actually accusing anyone of anything, but imagine that there were evidence that Brewster was using IA donations to fund a meth addiction. I don't think anyone would blame me for stopping donations to that because my intent was for the money to go to archiving, not drugs.
I don't think Brewster does meth, and even if he does I don't think that he's spending IA money to do it, but I do think he's spending IA money in pursuit of a lot of lawsuits that are a result of flagrant disregard for copyright law, at which point it feels more like I'm funding a lobbyist group, not an archive.
To be clear, I really dislike US copyright law, and I'm not even really opposed to people breaking it, but my opinion of of the law is somewhat irrelevant. The fact is that flagrant disregard for it at the level of IA means that lawsuits are going to happen. I don't really want to spend money on that, though obviously it's fine if other people want to.
> If that were the case then each copy would need to sell for thousands of dollars for content creators to afford food.
That is precisely the agreement that existing libraries have with publishers now. The digital copy that they buy to lend out comes with restrictions on how many copies can be lent at a time, and also costs a lot more than just buying one copy of the book.
The word “lending” doesn’t even make sense with digital goods. Nothing tangible is being lent or borrowed. Another perfect copy is being allowed to be made. Ironically it might not even be the same copy! Someone “borrowing” a digital good might download a copy of a new version or in a different language.
> The idea is to impose the restrictions of physical goods onto the digital one.
You know how some people think rent control is a good idea but then every economist explain how it’s actually bad? That’s how I feel about “impose the restrictions of physical goods onto digital”. It’s a terrible idea that has terrible ramification if you follow things to their logical conclusion.
> Your idea is to eliminate the very concept of a library where ebooks are concerned.
Yeah that’s totally fine. The metaphor of an ebook library is bad and illogical.
If you wanted to write digital-first copyright laws you wouldn’t invent a faux library. There’s better solutions out there.
> You know how some people think rent control is a good idea but then every economist explain how it’s actually bad? That’s how I feel about “impose the restrictions of physical goods onto digital”. It’s a terrible idea that has terrible ramification if you follow things to their logical conclusion.
We're only talking about applying that to lending, which otherwise wouldn't exist, so I don't see the issue. And more importantly it's applying the rights you get with physical books. ...Come to think of it, what restrictions are being added that don't already exist in our current broken state of digital copyright?
> You know how some people think rent control is a good idea but then every economist explain how it’s actually bad? That’s how I feel about “impose the restrictions of physical goods onto digital”. It’s a terrible idea that has terrible ramification if you follow things to their logical conclusion.
Do you have a specific grievance with respect to imposing lending restrictions on ebooks to mimic their physical counterparts?
Your analogy alone is strained and doesn't serve this topic well.
> Yeah that’s totally fine.The metaphor of an ebook library is bad and illogical.
I contend that the information contained in the books and not the format they're stored in are what matters. People checkout books from libraries to read their contents, not to sniff the paper they're printed on.
> If you wanted to write digital-first copyright laws you wouldn’t invent a faux library. There’s better solutions out there.
Do tell of these better solutions that don't require waiting several decades for all the pre-Internet baby boomer octogenarian lawmakers and judges to die off from old age.
> Yeah that’s totally fine. The metaphor of an ebook library is bad and illogical.
E-book lending is pretty much the only accessible option for people with sensory impairments. I think they're a larger portion of the population than writers, so why do writers' monetary interests overwrite accessibility concerns? Plenty of books aren't available in large print or audio versions; e-books are a great way for us to read those books. Big text is best text.
So people with perfect vision and hearing should be able to check out materials from a library and people with impairments shouldn't? That's also against the law.
So you're against the existence of libraries at all? Since they provide free access to the fruits of someone else's labor? That is at least an honest position. I won't pretend to have any respect for it, but at least it's consistent.
> So people with perfect vision and hearing should be able to check out materials from a library and people with impairments shouldn't? That's also against the law.
People with impairments can also check materials out from the library. The existence of a library for some things does not mandate a library for all things.
> So you're against the existence of libraries at all?
I think that first sale doctrine strikes a great balance for physical goods. If you buy a hammer you can later sell that hammer. Or you can give it away. Or you can setup a little library where people can borrow it either for free or a small fee. Over time the hammer will degrade and some people might prefer a new hammer. The rate at which a hammer can exchange hands is severely limited by space and time. I live in Seattle and can not easily borrow a hammer from a friend in New York or London.
Digital goods are a different beast. Copies can be made instantly, perfectly, and effectively for free. There is no such thing as "borrowing" an e-book. There is only being allowed to make a perfect copy or not. Digital goods are not bound by space or time. A global library with infinite, instantaneous transfer of rights would limit sales to peak concurrent user count. This would obliterate economic incentives for producing new content which would be, imho, a catastrophic net loss for society.
Physical good and digital goods are extremely different. They can and should have different rules. Trying to force them under a single umbrella is sub-optimal for both.
If I were King my changes to copyright law would be related to duration. I'd shorten it from life+70 years to something like ~30 years with the ability to extend it an additional ~20 years with an increasing per-year fee. And possibly add some form of "use it or lose it" after just ~10 years. Or something along those lines. I am not King so I've not fully thought this through. However as someone who makes and sells proprietary entertainment software I have thought through the ramifications of global digital libraries with instant and infinite transferability.
It puzzles me to hear of these "degradation" arguments, as if it isn't common to find perfectly readable books over 100 years old in antique shops.
"Degradation" is the conception publishers want to think of applying to their goods. Because they want an income stream worthy of items that perish in a matter of years, not decades or centuries.
I generally agree, but I'm not sure that your example works : it smells of survivorship bias (or whatever is the equivalent name for objects rather than people?)
Books do not biodegrade in a timeline we'll ever see in our lives unless there's water damage. Which is relatively rare.
It is very much not uncommon to see books several decades old in libraries. And I suppose it is survivorship bias in the most literal sense, but that's because there's so many survivors. It's practically the rule.
Don't they ? I have books printed in the last half of the 20th century where I'm starting to get worried about the yellowing of the pages (and the seemingly degrading structural integrity of the pages).
I've heard it was something about acidic paper (with it also being a plague of cheap printing, while being much less of an issue of expensive printing techniques).
If by "Everyone" you mean at least one of the sitting supreme court justices. What is considered "official duty" is not clearly defined, and will certainly be twisted to include things that seem like they obviously shouldnt be considered "official".
But if a president claims that a surgical strike to eliminate an "enemy of the country" was within their prerogative, then yes, a president can murder somebody without fear of consequences.
This is the biggest impact of this opinion IMO. The president can do basically any supervisory action within the executive branch for any reason without risk of criminal liability. His ability to direct federal agencies is only limited by the supply of palatable lackeys.
With regards to (b)(ii)(3), i.e. Trump's attempt to influence non-federal officials to select fake electors...
>> On Trump’s view, the alleged conduct qualifies as official because it was undertaken to ensure the integrity and proper administration of the federal election. As the Government sees it, however, Trump can point to no plausible source of authority enabling the President to take such actions. Determining whose characterization may be correct, and with respect to which conduct, requires a fact-specific analysis of the indictment’s extensive and interrelated allegations. The Court accordingly remands to the District Court to determine in the first instance whether Trump’s conduct in this area qualifies as official or unofficial. Pp. 24–28.
Which seems a key window for the lower court to send the case back up.
Trump attempted to influence non-federal election officials.
Trump had no Presidential authority to do so. (Elections being run by the states)
Ergo, that was not an official act.
Granted, the special counsel would have to prove that without using the Presidential personal notes... but it's still a pretty clear path given the non-Presidential documentation all the conspirators kept.
And it does make sense by the Supreme Court's reasoning: you can't restrict the President from running the executive branch, but you can hold him accountable for the things he does outside of the executive branch, which critically includes elections themselves.
> but it's still a pretty clear path given the non-Presidential documentation all the conspirators kept.
it's my understanding that they can't use testimony or notes from advisors et. al. which is troubling since they are or can be the co-conspirators.
> Presidents cannot be indicted based on conduct for which they are immune from prosecution. On remand, the District Court must carefully analyze the indictment’s remaining allegations to determine whether they too involve conduct for which a President must be immune from prosecution. And the parties and the District Court must ensure that sufficient allegations support the indictment’s charges without such conduct. *Testimony or private records of the President or his advisers probing such conduct may not be admitted as evidence at trial.*
My reading was they can't use testimony or notes from advisors in the executive branch who are helping the President perform an official act.
I.e. anything that would have a chilling effect on the President's ability to direct the executive
Outside of that, e.g. campaign staff, is a different matter. And I believe there's already a distinction between government employees and campaign employees (probably for campaign finance reasons).
Always respond with "You have the wrong number". This is the only way to actually get removed from these lists. It will take a while, because most of the people reaching out to you have paid a data broker for a list, and they get refunds/discounts for bad data, so they will report it back up to the data broker who will remove it. But this takes a while, and that number has already been sold multiple times to various campaigns, and also, its probably on more than one broker's list, so it takes a while to get it removed from all the brokers.
But it has worked for me:
I gave 10$ to a candidate once, and started getting texts every year for four years from multitudes of like-minded campaigns. I just told them wrong number every time and eventually, now, I get no more political spam texts.
No, that’s not the only way. “STOP” is a keyword that most carriers/providers will respect and handle automatically. “You have the wrong number” requires all that human involvement.
What about the people who argue that replying to any message just signals that there is a real person on the other end, causing them to now send even more messages?
I own my own domain name, and 28 variations of my email address have appeared in various breaches. In order to search and receive alerts for my domain, i had to sign up for a 16$/mo service.
> What makes open source what it is are its triumphs
If you define triumphs to include only 'popularity' and developer preferences, then sure, its triumphant.
> using a license like the Business Source License indicates a lack of belief in the vision of open source
The issue is that the vision of open source itself is lacking, because it doesn't recognize that it fails to provide a pathway to being compensated and rewarded, tangibly, for building, contributing, and maintaining open source software and the infrastructure that supports it.
Popularity is absolutely part of the triumphs I had in mind. It is often a very good thing in open source. It meant Internet Explorer 6 being less popular, as well as Windows on servers.
As far as the pathway to being compensated and rewarded - I want the community to be compensated and rewarded, not just those that started the project. We've seen this play out with ElasticSearch and OpenSearch, as well as Hashicorp. Even Sentry has an alternative https://glitchtip.com/
All banks take risks with the money that their customers deposit with them.
Sometimes those risks are bad, and banks cannot fulfill their obligations to their customers, so the FDIC, which is funded by banks (its deposit insurance) steps in and fixes a bank so that customers of that bank do not get screwed by picking a bad bank.
I dont see how any peasants are 'sharing any risk' here.
Everybody who held stock in SVB, just lost literally all of that. They invested in a bank that failed. Just like if they invested in a company that failed. Nobody is bailing those people out.
Anyone having a bank account will pay for it trough the banks fees/rates etc. Yellen avoided directly using tax money for the bail out, but it just is the next closest thing.
It really isn't though. Sure, at some level of abstraction, someone, somewhere, will have to pay for it, but this is clearly distinct from one's capacity as a taxpayer. All banks, however, benefit from the trust in banking system, so make sense for them to foot the bill. It's unclear how much of that will directly materially affect the average US depositor compared to letting SVB clients lose their shirt and thus erode the trust of the entire banking system.
If in the end the government is needed to (at least temporarily) backstop any deposits anyway, then why have commercial banks for deposits in the first place? Might was well give anyone an account at the Fed or something like that and fund loans and other assets at commercial banks out of bonds, CDs, etc. and never deposits.
> Might was well give anyone an account at the Fed or something like that
That's an interesting proposition, that was simply unfeasible from a practical perspective until very recently.
A consumer bank needed branches, and tills, and vaults, and all sorts of things to serve customers, so it was just unfeasible for most nation-states to eat the costs of all that - while private entities were incentivised to set all of that up so that they could raise money to invest for their own profit.
Now that money is increasingly a purely digital construct, a true National Bank could actually be feasible at low cost, providing a 100% safe deposit system for consumers that will never pay any interest. Private banks would likely still exist, they'd just provide more incentives to depositors (i.e. higher returns). This would make private banks a bit less central to the whole system, and make society a bit more fault-tolerant in this area.
It's an interesting policy proposition, and maybe talking about it would be a bit more productive than the average thread on banks.
The absolute worst assessment for FDIC insurance for the riskiest banks is ~.042% of [assets - equity]. For every $100 of deposits, the riskiest banks pay 42 cents in FDIC assessments. The safest banks pay about ~.005%. Pick a safe bank. Or don't. The cost doesn't really matter.
> Finally, the Federal Reserve Board on Sunday announced it will make available additional funding to eligible depository institutions to help assure banks have the ability to meet the needs of all their depositors.
That sounds a lot like some type of bailout to me. What does "make funding available" mean? Where does that funding come from? It's going directly to banks, not to depositors. How does that work?
SVB has a ton of bonds that mature (will be cashable) after ten years, but nobody wants to pay for them today because they can make more money placing their cash in a savings account. For a silly analogy, imagine if you had a bunch of cash locked up in a CD, but also had a surprise medical bill. Our parents could very easily look at your books and say “huh, I can advance you 80% of your CD because there is really no chance the CD won’t pay me back once it matures.” Is this a bailout? I don’t think so. It’s different than paying off our drunk uncle’s gambling debts for the 7th time.
And also we probably don’t want to say “haha silly SVB customers, they can wait ten years to get their money back” because none of us want to live in a world where most Americans, most of whom don’t understand all these complexities, start runs on ALL the banks because they think this is the start of a collapse. It becomes self-fulfilling at that point.
In terms of real dollars, those bonds will be worth less in 10 years because of inflation.
You’re correct in highlighting that if they fronted the cash now the bonds would be less, but it is simultaneously true that they will be worth less “2023 dollars” in 10 years.
Treasury bonds are not irresponsible. What is irresponsible is to not hedge your interest rate risk in the form of interest rate swaps. Most other conventional banks do exactly that; they have a portfolio of held-to-maturity (HTM) securities that they hedge with interest rate swaps to avoid bearing that risk. In the financial sector, you only leave unhedged the investments you are _actually_ betting on; if you are to say that they were betting on 10y bonds (until maturity) holding the same value as the day they bought them, without any form of risk management, I would consider that irresponsible.
Its not as clear as treasuries are safe or not. The price function is clearly dependent on term.
long term treasuries are extremely risky assets, by definition and move a lot on interest rates. whereas short term treasuries like less than three momths barely move on fed rates, hence much safer.
Svb bank made the wrong choice of holding super long duration treasuries. They knew what they were getting into, and did it anyway for higher yield at that time. they could have put the money in 3 month expirations and wouldnt have been in this situation.
If you're a bank that can't differentiate/navigate long term vs short term debts while experiencing ballooning deposits, then yes I agree it's time to jump ship and find a new profession.
I don't see how the US economy is to blame for the actions of a greedy monoculture based on "tech line go up". They made a long term bet on bonds with historically low interest rates, doubling down that the party would continue indefinitely. They didn't have a chief risk officer for 9 months! How is that the US economy's fault?
There's a reason they lobbied congress to weaken risk regulations.
Printing money and loaning it out is literally monetary inflation.
Money isn’t erased during a bank run. It’s given back to the owners who always had a right to have it. Fractional reserve banking is what erases money.
Printing money is not the same thing as inflation. It could cause inflation, but doesn't have to. And other things can cause inflation too. Inflation is merely the fact that stuff gets more expensive, but that can have many different causes. Excessive money printing is certainly the most notorious cause, but not all money printing is excessive. Sometimes printing money is the prudent thing to do because there's a growing need and therefore demand for money.
The definition of monetary inflation is increasing the monetary supply. That doesn’t need to happen by starting a printing press. It could be someone typing a bunch of zeros on a keyboard somewhere to create new money out of nothing.
I never said inflation was detrimental or harmful (my personal belief is that it is harmful, however), just that adding money to the supply is by definition monetary inflation (the origin of the concept of cost inflation which is what we’re being asked to accept as the true definition). Putting air into a balloon doesn’t mean it will pop; it’s still being inflated. Hey, it’s even more fun for a while ;-)
I was responding to a parent who said printing money isn’t inflation, when it’s the literal definition of, and the origin of the term in monetary theory. It’s not very constructive to conversation to attempt to change meaning of words to make one point or another.
I am sorry and you are correct. I blindly assumed that "inflation" means "price inflation", but you explicitly specified "monetary inflation", which is something completely different (though sometimes related).
My apologies for reading incorrectly. My comment is true only for price inflation.
where is there any indication that money is being printed for this? if anything trillions have been printed to support the so-called "peasants" (hate that term) that kick-started the avalanche.
Only the small percentage that was available in the bank's reserves; the money of all the people who didn't get their money out in time was indeed erased.
I believe the Fed is opening a new program to allow for "systemic risk" loans at typical Govt. interest rates; so there aren't any worries about running out of cash to give to customers having a panic
Just note that the FDIC provides deposit insurance up to $250k per named individual on the account. So joint accounts with married couples would be $500k. You can add children to increase as well.
Also, holding all of your fiat in a single bank or financial instrument is usually not a great idea. Diversification is important to any relatively stable financial position.
E.g: Fiat over $500k in a single institution is likely not earning as much as it could and runs the risk of loss of access to funds for X amount of time if the bank fails, until reimbursement happens. But $100k each in 2 different banks leaves you with $300k to invest however you see fit and still have enough liquidity to move quickly on opportunities.
You get your last paycheck, sure, but you still lose your job which is definitely a threat to workers lively hoods.
It's even more of a threat if the whole sector you're employed in suffers simultaneously, as it becomes difficult to continue to be employed in that sector.
I say as a person who’s been laid off twice and worked for a company that went bankrupt — why is that my problem?
Why should you get my money?
(In the case of the company I worked for which went bankrupt — we were a fintech startup with a truly innovative and fantastic product. Our management made three bad decisions which led to our demise. Two were technical and would have been recoverable, the last was a strategic move which ultimately proved disastrous.)
Exactly. I got a letter from my last startup Thu at 11pm telling us they had no cash for payroll tomorrow and we were all laid off. Poor planning along with super-lean cash flow broke my employer.
This is no different. For example, how many business checking accounts are backed by money market funds to get a little interest on them? Clearly states in offerings that rates aren’t guaranteed and you could even lose capital. Same with the $250k FDIC limit - clear risk with zero forethought from these employers of hedging it with lines of credit, payroll/business continuity insurance, etc.
Those are things “slow” companies do, not move fast and break things companies do (sarcasm intended - I have worked in R&D in both types multiple times).
It's because there is a cost associated with this insurance. It's not a bottomless pit of money, as FDIC pays out using the funds it collects from the participant banks and receives no funding from the government (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Deposit_Insurance_Corp...). I think it should be possible for the bank to get better coverage, but they should be paying much larger premium if they want insurance up to 250mm instead of 250k.
I also think that similar to "FDIC insured" labels in bank branches, FDIC should require posting "13% of deposits are FDIC insured" to help assess risk for those clients that have uninsured funds.
Why is the government involved beyond that limit in this case? Could it be they want to give the average person peace of mind while retaining the flexibility to handle a restructuring however they deem best?
If things get dire enough, the government can intervene to protect workers in various ways (unemployment benefits, emergency housing, government employment - there are many options).
No need to prop up the middlemen with free insurance.
Unemployment insurance is already available. California and all the west coast states at least will also give free insurance in many cases. There is little risk to being unemployed especially for a short term while employees slowly get their money back after the asset sales.
I don't really see the big problem here.
Svb still has substantial assets. In the coming weeks, they will be sold and solid portions of the money returned. If companies have to temporarily furlough people, they will still get a reasonable wage that most Americans live on.
> The DIF is funded mainly through quarterly assessments on insured banks. A bank's assessment is calculated by multiplying its assessment rate by its assessment base. A bank's assessment base and assessment rate are determined and paid each quarter.
Not sure if that's going to cover the haircut that depositors are going to take with respect to the difference in SBC's asset values at liquidation. There is surely going to be some gap and the question is should the taxpayers be on the hook for that gap to make the depositors whole.
Because it minimizes harm and stabilizes the economy. There are benefits to providing safety nets to people who didn’t have a hand in their own misfortune. Specifically those people get to continue providing value. The modern economy is not zero sum. Work creates value, it is in everyone’s interest to stabilize productive workers.
The owners of the bank aren’t being bailed out. The FDIC is only paying back depositors. That is the working class. This bank doesn’t just cater to big bad VCs.
When depositors lose their savings through no fault of their own the whole system comes crashing down. That won’t help blue collar workers.
