Ask Lemmy

Lina Khan was a perhaps once in a lifetime bureaucrat doing good for the people at a rapid pace on normal government timelines and now she’ll probably never get that job or a better one again.

There are a number of things that are legal here in the US, which would count as corruption in other places.

the CAN-SPAM act

I once wrote a community college paper for my friend in exchange for some work on my car. He had to write a paper on the CAN-SPAM act.

I did the assignment, covered all the requirements, explained it and whatnot. I then wrote a SECOND paper, appended to the end of the first. This second paper also met the length requirements, but was a parody. About the Hormel meat product, Spam. In cans. Can-Spam. I was very proud of it. It was funny.

I kept asking my friend if he ever got feedback from the professor. He never did. It was then that I learned professors often don’t read papers like this, they just assign them to get students to read and practice writing. It made me sad.

Yes, but - in many of those contracts (particularly end-user license agreements) you agreed to them changing the terms of the contract. You also have an "out" - not using the product any more.

You're right though: it's slimy. Anything slimy thing can be put into a contract!

Source: I'm not a lawyer, but worked in an office with a lot of them, and worked with software license agreements in particular.

Adblocking feels to me like it should be illegal, but isn’t. I have adblockers on all my devices and haven’t seen an ad for years; it feels like a secret super power and stopped the web from looking like a trashy back alley.

Marketing wasn’t really a thing until sometime around the Industrial Revolution and post-WW1. Before then, we didn’t really have the capacity to produce more than what people needed. Marketing basically just consisted of “here’s my product, here’s why it’s superior to others.” But with the post-war boom and the rise in manufacturing, producers were suddenly able to out-produce the demand. So they invented marketing, to get people to buy things that they didn’t actually need. The idea of “create a problem so you can sell the solution” was born.

What's worse is those same organisations get corporate welfare (tax breaks) but fight tooth and nail to prevent their workers from getting it.

They should just make it so that whatever they announce as their "earnings" to their stockholders should also be the amount that they are taxed for.

Looking at you, Adobe.

Surprisingly a lot of clauses in EULAS are and get "stricken" (even though this one still stands).

Just because they put it in the terms doesn't it legal.

That largely depends on what you take with you as you leave.