Thoughts of Something or Other

queernonywolf:

URGENT: Congress Wants To Make Streaming A Felony

venatus:

queernonywolf:

We were amazed to see hundreds of user-generated videos about S.978 pop up on YouTube after an action alert we sent out a few weeks ago.  Our wonderful crew of summer interns used those videos to make this mash-up, which explains why this bill — which would make it a felony to stream certain copyrighted content — is such bad news.

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This bill is vague enough that basically someone who is streaming movies to a 12 year old lipsynching or doing a cover on youtube can get the same treatment; five years imprisonment.

a video more here.

This kind of shoddy law writing is NOT what I condone and is clearly here with an agenda to cover companies and profits, NOT actual human beings.

this gets me a little mad, bill like this while annoying are not a big threat specifically it’s still waiting to be introduced to the floor and even if it passes there are a couple of things people generally don’t bring up quoting from wikipedia

“It defines illegal streaming as streaming ten or more times in a 180 day period. Furthermore, the value of the illegally streamed material would have to be greater than $2,500, or the licensing fees would have to be over $5,000.”

and in order to qualify you have to be the one hosting or uploading, not just viewing and licensing costs are negotiated, they don’t have vending machine prices (you want a song for a high school half time show, not going to cost nearly as much as when fox wants it for a summer block buster) and proving damage like that is only going to be feasible in extreme pirating situations (think mega upload or torrent sites).

long story short, yes oppose this bill, but acting like it’s even comparable to SOPA or the likes will just cause people to get use to the extreme narrative and less likely to act when the bills are a big deal.

The bill fails to describe what is and isn’t streaming.

That literally means it can be legally rhretoric’d to stretch and umbrella numerous things.

That is indeed dangerous.

(Source: dansphalluspalace)

oh thank god my faith in humanity restored

(mostly for my country’s humanity but yeah)

Hey guys I know I haven’t done much political blogging

(I’m kinda depressed from seeing all the shenanigans over my dash)

But I’m going to make one now just to remind all of my 18-and-older American voters to go VOTE.

Your wants don’t matter unless you make them heard!

stfuhypocrisy:

Scott Walker Quietly Repeals Wisconsin Equal Pay Law

WASHINGTON — A Wisconsin law that made it easier for victims of wage discrimination to have their day in court was repealed on Thursday, after Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) quietly signed the bill.

The 2009 Equal Pay Enforcement Act was meant to deter employers from discriminating against certain groups by giving workers more avenues via which to press charges. Among other provisions, it allows individuals to plead their cases in the less costly, more accessible state circuit court system, rather than just in federal court.

In November, the state Senate approved SB 202, which rolled back this provision. On February, the Assembly did the same. Both were party-line votes in Republican-controlled chambers.

SB 202 was sent to Walker on March 29. He had, according to the state constitution, six days to act on the bill. The deadline was 5:00 p.m. on Thursday. The governor quietly signed the bill into law on Thursday, according to the Legislative Reference Bureau, and it is now called Act 219.

Walker’s office did not return repeated requests for comment.

State Sen. Dave Hansen (D-Green Bay) and Rep. Christine Sinicki (D-Milwaukee), the authors of the Equal Pay Enforcement Act, criticized Walker on Thursday for not informing the public of his actions on SB 202.

“We are finally starting to see progress here in Wisconsin, yet like their counterparts across the country, Legislative Republicans want to turn back the clock on women’s rights in the workplace,” said Hansen.

Women earn 77 cents for every dollar that men make. In Wisconsin, it’s 75 cents, according to the Wisconsin Alliance for Women’s Health (WAWH), which also estimates that families in the state “lose more than $4,000 per year due to unequal pay.”

Business associations lobbied in support of SB 202, according to the state’s Government Accountability Board. Groups like Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, and the Wisconsin Restaurant Association all backed a repeal.

Sara Finger, executive director of WAWH, said that the repeal was a “demoralizing attack on women’s rights, health, and wellbeing.”

“Economic security is a women’s health issue,” she said. “The salary women are paid directly affects the type and frequency of health care services they are able to access. At a time when women’s health services are becoming more expensive and harder to obtain, financial stability is essential to maintain steady access.”

Walker is facing a recall election in June. The two frontrunners on the Democratic side who are competing to unseat him, former Dane County executive Kathleen Falk and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, sharply criticized the governor for allowing the repeal bill to become law.

Falk said Walker has “turned back the clock for women across Wisconsin.”

“As a woman and as a mother who worked full-time while raising my son, I know first-hand how important pay equity and health care are to women across Wisconsin,” she said in a statement to The Huffington Post.

A spokesman for Barrett’s campaign said that Walker’s “ideological civil war includes a war on women, and repeal today of this protection against pay discrimination is a major step backwards for Wisconsin values and basic fairness.”

“Tom Barrett knows equal pay for equal work is essential, and failing to stand up for Wisconsin women in the workplace is yet another reason he [Walker] must be defeated this summer,” he said.

UPDATE: 2:17 p.m. — The Plum Line reports that President Barack Obama’s campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith responded to Walker’s repeal, calling on former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination, to take a position on the issue.

“As he campaigned across Wisconsin, Mitt Romney repeatedly praised Governor Scott Walker’s leadership, calling him a ‘hero’ and ‘a man of courage,’” she said. “But with his signing yesterday of a bill make it harder for women to enforce in court their right to equal pay, Walker showed how far Republicans are willing to go to undermine not only women’s health care, but also their economic security. Does Romney think women should have ability to take their bosses to court to get the same pay as their male coworkers? Or does he stand with Governor Walker against this?”

fuckyeahsexeducation:

seriouslyamerica:

Have A Baby? There Goes Your Job.

liberalsarecool:

Supreme Courts’s 5-4 decision yesterday to negate part of the Family Leave Act:

“I’ll be damned if the conservatives on the Supreme Court weren’t getting jealous of all the congressional and state-level battles in the war on women  and decide that they needed to take up arms themselves….

First, conservatives want to make sure you get pregnant by limiting access to birth control, then force you to have the baby by limiting access to abortions, then if you get fired for taking time off to have the baby, you have no right to recourse for being fired. Great. All these things that have been litigated decades ago and established as basic rights have been inverted.” - Nicole Belle of Crooks & Liars

No birth control, no health screenings for mother or child, no job to come back to. That is the family values of the Republican Party.

excuse me while I rage.

For those who want article.

I just. Wat.

So as far as I understand, this is opening the door for peeps to get fired while pregnant, as well as the obvious consequences? Because while actually pregnant I imagine sick days would be for the health of yourself, primarily? Correct me if I’m wrong on that.

But there’s also the obvious of you can now be fired for needing a sick day for a documented illness, even if you’re in time frame provided by law? jdbfaskjbfa

stfuhypocrisy:

GOP Kicks Women Out Of Contraception Debate – Says It’s About Religion Not Women

If you’ve been following the debate on contraception over the last couple of weeks, you might have noticed a fascinating trend. Hormonal contraception is taken solely by women. It is prescribed by medical professionals for a variety of medical conditions, including some that would be very painful without birth control pills and some that could be deadly. Yet, on TV and now in Congress, neither women nor healthcare experts have been allowed to participate in the debate.

Media Matters posted this graph. Of about 300 cable TV panelists discussing the debate, just one was a healthcare provider. The rest were the usual array of political pundits with some righteously indignant religious leaders thrown in.

Congress, in an attempt to be even less “fair and balanced” than cable news, has decided to take women out of the debate altogether. In a hearing with the House Oversight Committee, Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) was asked by ranking Democratic committee member, Elijah Cummings (D-MD) to include the testimony of a woman. Issa refused, making the claim that,

“As the hearing is not about reproductive rights and contraception but instead about the Administration’s actions as they relate to freedom of religion and conscience, he believes that Ms. Fluke is not an appropriate witness.”

From Think Progress:

And so Cummings, along with the Democratic women on the panel, took their request to the hearing room, demanding that Issa consider the testimony of a female college student. But the California congressman insisted that the hearing should focus on the rules’ alleged infringement on “religious liberty,” not contraception coverage, and denied the request. Reps. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) walked out of the hearing in protest of his decision, citing frustration over the fact that the first panel of witnesses consisted only of male religious leaders against the rule. Holmes Norton said she will not return, calling Issa’s chairmanship an “autocratic regime.”

Video here: [CLICK LINK TO WATCH]

It’s one thing to be told that one of our most basic liberties, a liberty that women have had for two generations, may be in danger. It’s one thing to be told that medicine for real conditions that affect millions of American women may not be provided by health insurance. It’s quite another when we are told not to worry our pretty little heads about  issues that directly affect our bodies because our opinions are irrelevant.

(*born uterus-bearers, not just women, and please tell me if there’s a proper term I should use instead of that)

BECAUSE THERE’S NO WOMEN ANYWHERE IN RELIGION

NOT ADMINISTRATIVE OR ANYTHING

RIGHT GUYS?