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The Censor Treatment has now become a thing in the Call of Duty. This term is now well known among players as well as pros. Doug Censor Martin is a pro player who has been trying to make it big in the top tier Call of Duty competitive scene. He had also managed a spot as a substitute player in the New Year Subliners team, although he was seldom picked in the playing roster.

Censor struggled a lot and ultimately gave up a few weeks back. He said that he will be going back to playing in the challenger system.

For those who not know, the challenger system is the base camp for becoming a pro. It is the amateur, or rather the build-up scene, where people begin and the good ones rise from there and make it big in the top-tier scene in Call of Duty.

Read more: Call of Duty Charity Tournament Winners Accused of Cheating

The Twitch streamer Michael Sonii Sherman recently posted a tweet saying that he might be getting the censor treatment since he does not have a long time CS: GO or tactical FPS experience. A major reason for this is that he is a major Battle Royale player/streamer for the Korean organization T1.

What he means by Censor Treatment is that he will be looked down upon by certain snobs at any game who will definitely not let him in into the top-tier scene. Just like what happened to Censor.

He adds in this tweet that he has had only one month of Valorant and tactical FPS experience. Still, he is already playing with some pretty big names in the scene.

As a reply to this tweet, Censor said some really positive words to Sonii.

We know that Censor is, in fact, saying this from experience. Censor had to struggle, or grind, really hard to even reach the sub spot at New York Subliners. After he brought himself down to the challenger system, it is as if he wanted to build himself until he has earned his spot in the big league. This would be his answer to the ones who looked down upon him.

Even Shroud commented on Soniis tweet. He too asked Sonii to keep working hard for his spot among the big names. Shroud went into a full dad-mode, inspiring Sonii to keep up his grind:

Soniis tweet got a lot of wholesome replies and it is always nice to see that even though there are a lot of toxic streamers or players out there, there are people like Shroud too. For example, heres what Lucas Mendo Hkanssonc, from Team Liquid, replied on Soniis tweet.

All these players have themselves struggled really hard to be where they are now, and they are rooting for Sonii in his own struggle to the top. A lot of other players have also supported Sonii saying that they have been following his stream and have witnessed his improvement. Sonii is known for streaming a lot of games and if he keeps working hard for a spot among the big guys, he can surely earn it.

Read the rest here:
Shroud and Censor Urge Valorant Pro to Grind - Essentially Sports

from the sorry-charles dept

Lawyer Charles Harder (who, yes, was once the lawyer for the guy who sued us) has built up a nice reputation now of the lawyer who tries and fails to stop people from saying stuff that upsets President Trump. You may recall that Harder, representing the president, threatened former Trump adviser Steve Bannon for his supposed quotes to author Michael Wolff. More recently, Harder, representing the Trump Campaign, has sued the NY Times, the Washington Post and CNN over various articles (often opinion pieces) that portray the President negatively.

His latest move, representing Donald Trump's brother, Robert Trump, is to sue Mary Trump, Donald Trump's niece, over her new book that is quite critical of the President. The argument in the lawsuit? That Mary Trump was violating a confidentiality clause that was part of the settlement of a legal dispute over the estate of Fred Trump -- another of Donald's brothers, and Mary's father. It took all of about a day for the judge to reject the lawsuit, basically because Charles Harder messed up the filing.

At the outset, the court finds that the submissions suffer from several improprieties. First, a preliminary injunction is an order obtained by motion in a pending action or special proceeding... The caption utilized refers to a probate proceeding which terminated in 2001 by entry of a decre and is, therefore, non-existent. Consequently, a motion seeking injunctive relief may not be made in that proceeding. To the extent the accompanying petition, bearing the same caption, is supposed to provide the jurisdictional basis for said motion, it cannot do so as that petition is fatally defective.

Beyond that, they picked the wrong forum for this request:

Insofar as the petition seeks a declaratory judgment, this forum is presumptively improper as such relief should be obtained by means of an action in the Supreme Court and not a special proceeding in this court....

Of course, it appears that Harder is planning to just keep going and try again by fixing his mistakes:

Today, the Surrogates Court ruled that it does not have jurisdiction over the dispute, Harder said in a statement. Therefore, Robert Trump will proceed with filing a new lawsuit in the New York State Supreme Court.

Mary Trump's lawyer, Ted Boutrous, said he hoped that Harder would stop, but recognizing that's unlikely, points out that no court may violate the 1st Amendment by imposing prior restraint and blocking publication of a book that is "core political speech."

Given Harder's history, it seems unlikely that he much cares about the 1st Amendment.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, charles harder, donald trump, free speech, mary trump, prior restraint, robert trump, venue

Go here to read the rest:
Charles Harder Tries And Fails To Censor Another Book About His Most Famous Client, The President - Techdirt

Zoom is the latest technology company to find itself caught between the competing demands of growing its business, upholding the ideals of an open internet, and acceding to censorship requests from China.

In a statement yesterday, the US-based video-conferencing company admitted to shutting down meetings held to commemorate those who died during the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown in China, and suspending the accounts of two activists and Humanitarian China, a US-based organization of exiled Chinese activists at the direct request of Beijing, who said the meetings were illegal. There are no Chinese laws stipulating that activities related to the June 4 massacre are illegal, but people in China, except Hong Kong, have been banned from holding any vigils or posting words related to the incident online. The accounts were suspended between late May and early June, according to the activists.

The statement, which gives outsiders a rare glimpse into how Chinese censorship of American firms take place, explains that of the four meetings flagged by Chinese authorities, three were shut down because a significant number of participants were based in mainland China. The fourth, which didnt have attendees located in China, was left uncensored.

Particularly noteworthy is Zooms evident attempt at threading a fine needle: within a span of a few short paragraphs, it simultaneously chastised governments for censoring their own citizens, while pledging to improve its own censorship mechanisms to better address censorship requests from different states. It sounded a contrite note over its inability to be surgically precise in its censorship, saying it could have anticipated this need to block participants by country, which would have allowed them to keep the meetings running despite significant repercussions.

While news of Zooms censorship has sparked an uproar, some say its actions are par for the course. This is honestly fairly standard for all the tech companies, said Lokman Tsui, assistant professor of journalism at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. [Zoom was] caught off guard because they were growing so fast and didnt foresee the need for this kind of technology. So this is just part of their growing pains. The technology to target specific users based on location will only get more sophisticated because it is hugely lucrative for the advertising industry, he added, and the same technology can be co-opted and appropriated for censorship reasons.

Zooms compliance with Beijings censorship requests raises a number of pressing questions about what users can expect of the service going forward. James Millward, a professor of Chinese history at Georgetown University, is concerned about the safety of Chinese students studying abroad and their families at home. And if other countries make their own censorship demands on Zoom, one could plausibly foresee a messy matrix of different rules for different Zoom users, potentially disrupting the companys mission of making global communications frictionless.

Zooms statement could use some clarification of what they are going to do with features, and of course we have to see what those features look like in action, said Rui Zhong, a program associate at the Wilson Center, a think tank, in Washingon, DC. But for Chinese users, this is the latest chapter in a series of tech feature limitations that goes back to the mid 2000s, when Facebook and Google and Twitter were shut out via the firewall.

In a statement to Quartz, a Zoom representative said the company regrets that participants both inside and outside of China were negatively impacted and important conversationsdisrupted, but that [i]t is not in Zooms power to change the laws of governments opposed to free speech. The representative added that for situations where local authorities block communications for participants within their borders, Zoom is developing additional capabilities that protect these conversations for participants outside of those borders.

China has imposed a virtual firewall that forbids its citizens from accessing major foreign websites such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube since 2006. In reality, some Chinese internet users are still browsing foreign websites with the help of the virtual private networks which can circumvent the firewall, although this practice has become increasingly dangerous and difficult in recent years.

US-based Zhou Fengsuo,president of Humanitarian China, said he was not satisfied with Zooms statement. Although it acknowledged that the company had made a mistake in suspending the accounts, Zoom needs to give more information such as which Chinese department had raised the suspension requests to them, he told Quartz.

Zhou, a former student leader during the Tiananmen protests, said that he did not wish to see Zoom use a geography-based censorship mechanism because that would amount to the company bowing to Beijing, as well as enhancing Chinas firewall and consolidating the segregation of the internet.

Wang Dan, another US-based former Tiananmen student leader who also had his account temporarily suspended, told Quartz that he has hired a lawyer and is considering taking legal action against Zoom. Lee Cheuk-yan, a Hong Kong politician who organizes the citys annual June 4 candlelight vigil, is the second individual activist who saw his account suspended. All three accounts have been reinstated after Zoom realized they were based in Hong Kong and the US, according to the statement.

Zoom is certainly not the first American tech company to find itself in such a situation. Apple, for example, does significant business in China, but is at the same time expected to preach Western standards on issues like freedom of speech. Recently, it came under fire for removing a Hong Kong protest app from its app store. Microsoft-owned Skype, before it was completely removed from app stores in China in 2017, also had a China-only version of its software that censored a specific list of words.

At the core of the issue is whether those companies should uphold their American values even if that means they giving up on the lucrative China market, as Google did, or continue their operations in the country by compromising certain practices such as adopting advanced censorship systems. Google, which initially accommodated Chinese censorship requests in 2006 in order to operate there, eventually decided to shutter its search product in China in 2010 after it detected attempts from China to hack into Gmail accounts, including those of human-rights activists.A plan to re-enter the market with a censored version of its search engine was scrapped last year.

Zhou said he agrees with the path that Google chose when faced with Chinas restrictions, but also noted that as it is difficult for a single American company to stand up to Beijing, the US government should help, for example, with countermeasures to force China to open up its internet.

Read more:
Zoom will continue censoring calls at China's request - Quartz

To the editor: I am shocked that screenwriter, director and novelist John Ridley demanded the elimination of Gone with the Wind from the HBO Max streaming service, and that HBO caved.

Yes, Gone with the Wind portrays slavery in a benign light, and it could not be remade today without a major rewrite to dramatize the horrors of slavery and include multidimensional Black characters. It is also a major landmark in film history and one of the most popular movies ever made.

Censorship is wrong, even if its done by anti-racists demanding to suppress a film that, for all its glorification of the lost cause, also presents a heroine who grows from a shallow schemer into a woman of strength and power. Besides, removing Gone with the Wind prevents viewers from seeing the first performance by a Black actor to win an Academy Award.

Mark Gabrish Conlan, San Diego

..

To the editor: Thank you for publishing Ridleys timely essay about the 1939 film Gone With the Wind. Many of my elders considered this film nonfiction, depicting the truth about the Civil War.

Rebel soldiers like Ashley Wilkes were dashing, romantic heroes to them. They truly believed that the so-called cause the Confederacy fought for was righteous and sacred.

Bravo to HBO for its decision to pull it from their lineup. I agree with Ridley: The film should be shown, but with panel discussions and interviews to help viewers understand the harm this kind of propaganda has caused.

Marcia Harlan, Idyllwild

..

To the editor: I appreciated Ridleys piece urging HBO not to show Gone With the Wind.

In 2001, a parody novel was published entitled The Wind Done Gone, a retelling of the story of Gone With the Wind from the standpoint of one of the slaves. I wonder if there has been any consideration of making a movie based on that novel.

John T. Donovan, Hacienda Heights

Excerpt from:
Removing 'Gone With the Wind' from HBO Max is censorship - Los Angeles Times

To the Editor: Once censorship occurs, a platform can never be trusted again (Jack Dorseys Biggest Fight Yet, Cover Story, June 5).

Sure, today it may be a political position you agree with, but tomorrow this may change. Users and advertisers must now be looking over their shoulders asking whether this runs afoul of the censors. This becomes an added risk for all users.

Why do people feel the need to protect the public from political language they feel is incorrect or offensive? Is the filter to ban everything that may set off the violence-prone, the mentally ill, or gun owners? Then Catcher in the Rye would be banned by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and his censors.

I do not believe much of anything I see or hear on the news shows, cable, or the internet. Many of President Donald Trumps tweets are nonsensical. Twitters 280-character limit does not allow for explanation and understanding.

This is a platform designed for rants and slogans. If you believe in free speech and the ability of the public to think, you would best steer clear of Twitter.

Don Knife, Rocky River, Ohio

To the Editor:The table showing that Facebook and Twitter had annual revenue of $30 and $20 per user, respectively, was very enlightening. It seems to me that there are enough users of these platforms who are now persuaded that the ad-based model is a failed experiment, and would now be willing to pay $20 or $30 a year to subscribe to equivalent community platforms that are free of ads, clickbait, and disinformation.

Without the overhead of managing the ad environment, an ad-free subscription-funded platform should be able to make a tidy profit while providing useful, curated, fact-checked news.

Dennis Strauss, entura, Calif.

To the Editor:Your article really struck a chord in me (Can Big Business Fix Racial Injustice? It Has to Try. Heres How, June 5).

Im a 62-year-old Latina who was driven to succeed after graduating from Indiana University business school in the class of 1984. I knocked on countless doors, read dozens of job-success books, and dressed and acted the part; yet the best offers I got were for secretary/reception.

I updated and modernized a few office systems and kept being passed up for promotions. Even after proving my financial effectiveness for bosses, request for promotions resulted in recently hired, white temps getting the better jobs.

Decades later, I proved myself as a sought-out Montessori teacher by parents, students, faculty, and staff for effective, compassionate, knowledgeable, dedicated work.

Yet here I sit dreading having to work two unfulfilling jobs (downsizing from three) and unable to have any pleasure in life, as I only live and work to pay off bills.

Jobs and prospective positions (even as a bilingual, certified teacher applying to Title 1 schools with a majority of Latino students) have brushed me aside to make room for white, recent grads.

Thank you for your article, which reminded me that its not me; its the system.

Yolanda Casillas Ochoa, Sarasota, Fla.

To the Editor:Your article Amid U.S-China Tensions, Active Managers Are Buying (June 5) describes the various ways that investors could invest in Chinese stocks if they were to be delisted on U.S. markets. Sure, the growth potential in Chinese stocks seems high, but why would people take the increased risks in buying Chinese stocks?

When Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse performed Dancing in the Dark, it was the epitome of grace and elegance. Dancing in the dark, however, is not a good strategy for financial investing. The Chinese government has forced Chinese companies to put a virtual blackout on meaningful financial disclosure. The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has no visibility into Chinese company financial data.

Honestly, would you buy a new car if you went to the makers website and it had a bunch of pretty pictures but no information about the cars performance or safety features?

Arthur M. Shatz, Oakland Gardens, N.Y.

To the Editor:The article Merger Arbs Are Confident Despite Whispers on Tiffany Deal (June 4) states that Taubman Centers shares at [a then] $44 trade at a 15% discount to Simon Property Groups offer of $52.50 a share. While technically correct, that is not how professional merger arbs evaluate a deal; it would be more appropriate to state the percentage increase from the current price to the offer price, which at the prices stated in the article would amount to a 19.32% return.

Edward Taussig, Brooklyn, N.Y.

To the Editor:I think the general feeling was, this jobs report will stink but it didnt stink as badly as we thought it would (Why the Jobs Report Isnt Quite as Good as It Seems, Up & Down Wall Street, June 5). The job numbers wont resemble what we saw at the beginning of the year because businesses have opened at a diminished capacity, unemployment payments are like a raise for many, some companies wont survive, and most will probably tread cautiously until they know what the reopened economy looks like. Career politicians found it easy to close businesses, but few to none have ever opened a business (at least one that didnt fail). So their so-called guidance will probably mess things up for a while to come.

Terrence Milan, On Barrons.com

Send letters to: mail@barrons.com. To be considered for publication, correspondence must bear the writers name, address, and phone number. Letters are subject to editing.

Original post:
Letters to the Editor of Barrons - Barron's