The “Florida bans the Internet” stories I’ve seen play it off as a mistake, but I’m no so sure:
TALLAHASSEE — A South Florida Internet cafe operator, whose clientele is primarily migrant workers seeking computer time, is suing the state, challenging the constitutionality of the Legislature’s ban on illegal slot machines.
The lawsuit filed in Miami-Dade Circuit Court on behalf of Incredible Investments, LLC, owned by Consuelo Zapata, alleges that the Legislature effectively applied the ban to all computers when it defined illegal slot machines as any “system or network of devices” that may be used in a game of chance. The state effectively made every smartphone and computer an illegal device, the plaintiff argues.
Banning places where poors and browns congregate is not a bug, it’s a feature. I expect a revision to the bill exempting smartphones, private computers and any other device typically used by someone white or middle class.
Jerzy Russian
The stupid is strong here. Unless there is evidence to suggest otherwise, concluding they accidentally banned the internet is the safe bet.
Did anyone notice the googol outage?
jamick6000
“it’s not a bug, it’s a feature” has become a tired cliche. I would suggested using “intended” or “intentional”
Forum Transmitted Disease
I am not willing to grant that any lawmaker – and I’ve met a few – would have the brains to think this through.
It’s usually the stupid legislation that does the most damage.
NickT
My guess is that the usual collection of senile white maniacs didn’t have a clue about the technologies involved and were too full of themselves to consult someone who was both compos mentis and knowledgeable.
Baud
That’s too bad about the Internet in Florida. I’ll miss Betty.
MobiusKlein
Wasn’t there a chain of internet cafes that were operating as de-facto gambling dens?
The Lieutenant governor had to resign because of it.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/13/us-usa-florida-lieutenantgovernor-idUSBRE92C0M320130313
I think there is a bit more to it than ‘shutting down intertubz’
PhoenixRising
If this surprises you, please plan a trip to see your own state’s legislature in action. Villages are missing their idiots all over the US. It’s not atypical, they just stepped on someone who can afford a lawyer.
Betty Cracker
The cafes they were trying to ban (after it was revealed that Gov. Bat Boy’s Lt. Gov. was flacking for them, prompting her to resign) are gambling cafes that mostly serve white old farts, so perhaps poors and browns were merely collateral damage.
What puzzles me is this: Why on earth would the State of Florida NOT want to separate old farts from their money? It’s practically our state motto. I haven’t looked into it, but I suspect somehow these internet cafes were cutting in on the state’s other gambling operations and thus had to be eliminated as competitors. If you assume the state operates like the Mafia would, you’re usually right.
Citizen Alan
I am so tired of the banal cliche that we should “never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity.” When the effects of apparent stupidity always, always, inure to the benefit of the people accused of acting stupidly, there should be a clear presumption of malice instead.
boatboy_srq
@Jerzy Russian: Very very strong.
But since FL has been (not inaccurately) branded Retirementland for so long, it’s possible that most of the volk supporting this hare-brained idea don’t know any more about the impact than Ted “Intertubes” Stevens – and Teh Poors and Teh Browns should be mowing the lawn (and not surfing the Web) before those darned kids get on it. I’d wait until the Bluehairs and Humpbacks realise they can’t play bingo on their iPads anymore before expecting any major push to change this.
FL is a study in contracidictions for technology. The same place that is trying to market cheap data center space can’t seem to provision supply (power, water, transportation, whatever) to support it.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
It’s Florida. They have a second amendment right to shoot from the hip, and a stand your ground law that allows them to claim they were correct in doing it.
Spaghetti Lee
Given the topic, I predict this thread will end up with more comments in spam-filter moderation that out of it.
Anyway, I’ve never understood the moral panic about games of chance. They get more crap in this country than guns, tobacco, or booze, which kill a lot more people.
boatboy_srq
@Betty Cracker:
Um, because in the case in the complaint, the old farts’ money was going to some of those Brown Peeps, and not to HCA or Raymond James where it belongs? Just sayin’…
scav
A) wasn’t it a legislator we have to thank for a series of tubes?
B) does anyone else necessarily hear “I deleted the Internet?!” in Eddie Izzards voice?
NonyNony
@Betty Cracker:
This is typically what goes on in all states that have state-operated lotteries – Florida wouldn’t be unique in this by any stretch.
ruemara
@NickT: This. Far more likely this. And it’s not senile. You can be pretty young (comparatively) and with your arrogant head stuck so far up your ass, you craft legislation that fucking burns everything.
dm
I expect public libraries will continue to have computers available to the public (though I suppose budget-cuts may mean they’re only open at times when only the retired or the unemployed can use them).
This is not a “let them eat cake” response, just a data point that argues against the ‘making the internet unavailable” as a feature of the legislation.
Internet cafes probably charge a fee for you to use their computers, by the way. So it’s not like they’re that much of a boon for the poor.
NickT
@ruemara:
Well, I grant that not ALL of them are senile – but most of the legislation I’ve seen from the teabaggers has been appallingly ill-written and shown little evidence of any understanding of the topic at issue. They seem to think that legislation is about expressing their crude and simplistic “moral view” without regard to anything resembling reality.
NonyNony
@boatboy_srq:
The Fuck? Why would anyone pick Florida (or really much of the South) as a place where you would want to set up a data center operation? For a data center you want a place where it’s cheap and easy to control the humidity, not a place where you need to spent the GNP of a small European country just to keep the humidity controlled in a building. And that’s before we get to questions about building a data center anywhere near a swamp…
West Virginia, on the other hand, would be a state that could revolutionize themselves by selling abandoned mines in the mountains as the perfect place to set up data centers (if they could find the money to build out the power and data connectivity to those sites, of course…)
morley bolero
This is the same gang of boneheads that accidentally banned all Canadian drivers last year, so I’m sticking with the incompetent theory.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@dm:
You realize this entire paragraph hinges on the word “probably”, right? You second sentence should probably read “So they may not be that much of a boon for the poor.”
The only reason I am overparsing this is that it seems that a lot of workers were using these cafes.
Jerzy Russian
@Citizen Alan:
I see your point. We know that stupid people exist, and we also know that mean people (aka assholes) exist. Perhaps it is an unconscious coping mechanism I have where I just assume stupidity, since otherwise the notion that I am surrounded by mean people becomes too painful to contemplate.
Ted & Hellen
Eh…I think they’re too stupid to have done this intentionally.
I’m going with Floridian Retardation Syndrome as the likely explanation.
Face
@morley bolero: They did what? Linky?
Tone in DC
@Jerzy Russian:
I think it’s a mistake to imply that the two qualities are mutually exclusive.
See O’Keefe James
Breitbart, Andrew
Malkin, Michelle
O’Reilly, William
Imus, Don
Zimmerman, George
Teabaggers
Those two judges in PA that railroaded juveniles for years
and many others.
Citizen_X
@NonyNony:
Yes, and the heat, and oh yes: you want a place that is not smacked by hurricanes on a regular basis.
? Martin
United Pastry Jihad is back on!
Focused like a laser on jobs.
ruemara
@Citizen_X: If my local legislature needed data space, you’d have sold them with that copy. If you told them you run it with volunteers and 3 highly paid executives, the orgasm would deafen you.
Bob In Portland
@Citizen Alan: So true. Certain military-intelligence agencies routinely get budget bumps from their whoopsadaisy failures.
Tractarian
Didn’t know that “poors and browns” are the only ones who like internet gambling
? Martin
@Citizen_X:
But Florida’s problem is they have too many gay data centers. That’s why the hurricanes keep coming. If you only build non-gay data centers for a while, the hurricanes will stop.
Alex S.
Any device that may be used in a game of chance? That sounds like an awfully written law. They’d have to take away every phone that connects to the internet from every person. Will they ban dices and cards as well?
gelfling545
@dm: As I understand it the any device that could access the internet and play any type of game of chance may be illegal under the law. It was not the targeting of the places so much as the definition of what constitutes an illegal gambling device which is rather broad to say the least.
Alex S.
@Alex S.:
Oh, now I see, it’s ‘network of devices’…
cmorenc
@Jerzy Russian:
I agree – this legislation was a typical naively simplistic attempt to address a particular slippery issue by using language broad enough to close off any inadvertent loopholes, without broad enough consideration or imagination to consider what else might be unintentionally included. Such as the entire internet, or cell phone network, or even an internal office computer network (where employees might run a betting pool on the NCAA basketball tournament among themselves).
dmsilev
@? Martin:
Does the 2nd Amendment cover lasers, or only things which emit bullets?
Redshirt
They didn’t just ban the internet, but everything. Phones, landlines, faxes, telegraphs, ie “Any network that can be used to gamble”.
One assumes any stock brokers and the like in Florida are also now out of business.
Gone Gulch y’all!
Mr Stagger Lee
Well if they uphold this ban, I can see the return of the speakeasy and the blind pig. Anarchy in F.L.A! Underground Sunshine! Hasta Siempre!!!
gene108
From reading the article it seems to me that it’s more of a right-wing Christian gut reaction to gambling being a sin, than to a deliberate attack on the poor and the brown.
I remember growing up in North Carolina, when Virginia adopted a state lottery, but a lot of folks in the legislature were against North Carolina adopting a state lottery because gambling is a sin.
Seems to me to be the same sort of imposition of morals with this Florida law.
MattF
Also, I do ‘Monte Carlo’ simulations, and, arguably, my salary goes up when I get interesting results. So, that’s clearly very illegal in Florida, I’m pleased to say.
Svensker
@dm:
Define poor.
In our neighborhood in Toronto, the internet cafe serves the working poor. Folks who can’t afford a computer and a monthly internet fee but want to check e-mails occasionally, print documents, read up on stuff. Or olds who come in to while away some time surfing the internet or playing solitaire or scrabble. The place near us charges $2/hour, so it’s not a bad investment for folks who don’t have a lot but have something. Not a lot of bankers or legislators in there, though.
Violet
@Alex S.: Yeah, no more Go Fish card games with the kids, let alone Candyland. Games of chance.
scav
@Redshirt: “Any network that can be used to gamble”? Couldn’t families be legitimately described as networks of people? Out go the crime families, taking Auntie Millie, cousin Bubba and PaPa with them!
Xenos
Sounds like a case of unconstitutional vagueness here: exactly what is and what is not permitted are so poorly defined that any exercise of prosecutorial discretion results in capricious and arbitrary enforcement (I think that is how that goes, been a long time since ConLaw).
piratedan
OT: TY Texas for the latest in the ongoing culture war battles, when all attention must be focused on the erstwhile behavior of sluts while business regulation, climate change and income inequity get ignored..
scav
@Violet: “Roll the Dice, You Pay the Price.”
ericblair
@Citizen_X:
And this isn’t just snark: this is what the decision meetings sound like. Hurricanes are also affect large geographic areas, so you need a backup site on the other side of the country pretty much to make sure the hurricane doesn’t take out both. Green computing is a big fucking deal now, so air conditioning load really matters, and I’d be asking questions about the ability to staff qualified reliable personnel in some of these areas. If you’re going to locate your site based on who’s the cheapest, you deserve what’s coming to you.
Violet
@ericblair: Yeah, New York City found that out the hard way when Hurricane Sandy hit. Lots of servers located there took a hit.
Cassidy
The “internet cafes” didn’t separate old white people from their money. They separated poor people from their money. These places rarely provided a service more than “sweepstakes”
Redshirt
Don’t forget consoles, Floridians! – your XBox and PS3 and the like are all now BANNED.
Villago Delenda Est
@Betty Cracker:
Hey, Lex Luthor’s wife profited handsomely from the drug testing for welfare recipients program that cost far more than any fraud, waste, or abuse it uncovered. Well, except for the inherent fraud, waste, and abuse that the program was itself.
Villago Delenda Est
So, I take it that the trading of stocks and bonds is now illegal in Florida?
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Face: Link, with summary below.
After offending thousands of Canadians, causing havoc in local tourism offices and possibly running afoul of the Geneva Convention, Florida lawmakers completed a speedy about-face Tuesday, officially repealing a law requiring foreign tourists to get an International Driving Permit.
With a stroke of Gov. Rick Scott’s pen, Canadians and other international tourists will no longer have to obtain a special permit before they are allowed to drive in Florida. A little-noticed law passed last year and signed by Scott had created the new requirement.
Lawmakers originally pushed for the International Driving Permit requirement after concern that some foreigners had licenses that were not written in English. They did not foresee all the problems that would ensue when the law went into effect on Jan. 1.
Violet
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
I bet plenty of people foresaw those problems. I love how the media gives them that get of jail free card. “No one could have predicted!”
Redshirt
Gameboys are banned, also too.
ericblair
@Villago Delenda Est:
One man’s fraud, waste, and abuse is another man’s boat payment.
Villago Delenda Est
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
The Geneva Convention, as we learned during Clinton’s third term in the Oval Office, is “quaint”.
John M. Burt
I am reminded of the city council which made it a crime to have sexual intercourse “in or in view of a public or private place”.
Scav @43, isn’t a church hosting a bingo game a “network used to gamble”?
Villago @52, how about if we at least make every stock market trade pay the gambling tax? Or even a hundredth of a percent tax…?
NickT
@Redshirt:
Mass executions of gamers will be commencing shortly. Don’t forget to thank your GOP representative for the priceless gift of freedom from enjoyment of virtual worlds and the friends you made there.
Redshirt
@John M. Burt: Bingo was specifically allowed in this bill. BINGO!
BGK
I understand making sport of Florida is fun. Fine, I’m used it it; I’ve lived here too long not to be. Those of you thinking it’s idiocy to build a datacenter in Florida may not have heard of NAP of the Americas. In addition to handling pretty much all the voice and data traffic for Latin America, the terms of service (which I just bipped over to accounting to peruse, as we have equipment co-located there) guarantee 100% uptime on environmentals, power, and data.
karen
I think Betty’s right, this was a reaction to the Lt. Governor debacle.
Urza
All the data center talk is kind of funny when its going to be possible in a few short years to use one of the most abundant substances on the planet to store data for at least a million years in very tiny spaces.
http://www.dvice.com/2013-7-9/welcome-fifth-dimension-where-data-stored-crystals
boatboy_srq
@NonyNony: Yup. Qwest and a few others are setting up shop in the hinterlands – and FPL/TECO, and the other utilities, just can’t keep up. For some obscure reason the buiilders think that local small businesses, and Disney/DelMonte/whoever, would be attracted (admittedly it would be an improvement for the beachside hotels, whose onsite equipment is often mere feet from salt water instead of miles). I hear the rack space rates are really cheap: not surprising when the risk of going dark for months is measurable (anyone remember 2004/5? All those storms, and AGES in recovery)…
WV could make a killing with those places – assuming, again, that MTR hadn’t made the sites unstable or the local water supply undrinkable, or that utilities/roads could be brought in to service the sites as you said: there’s plenty of DC/NoVA businesses for whom WV would be just far enough away to satisfy DR requirments, and Clarksburg/Charleston would benefit immensely. OTOH, with all the coal still in-state, building a dedicated power plant could actually be cost-effective, and further guarantee uptime (not that I’m a coal proponent, but it is an effective use of a local resource in this case).
Seanly
@? Martin:
Honestly, I could get behind anything that junks stupid zero-tolerance idiocy. Did I mention that zero-tolerance policies are stupid & idiotic? Because they are.
RE: Internet ban. I think it’s probably a poorly worded law, but on the other hand, the access of uncontrolled information still concerns the crap out of a lot of people in power (not intended as a wake-up-sheeple type statement). The law with vague wording & discretionary enforcement gives a lot of power to throw charges onto people who step on the wrong toes. From the number of people fighting it though, I don’t think this stands much of a chance of staying.
Seanly
Oh & regarding a great place for data centers – Boise, ID. Very low humidity year round, (unfortunately) low wage state, friendly & well educated wrokforce, low land costs and established high tech community (Micron used to be very big here). It’s also a very beautiful city with lots of outdoor actitvities within & nearby. It’s a conservative state (though Boise is kinda purple) but not the in-your-face what-church-do-you-attend?-oh-that’s-not-the-right-one like the SE.
burnspbesq
@? Martin:
Every time I think they can’t get stupider, they prove me wrong.
MattR
@? Martin:
I assume the good folks at TPM screwed up and that the bill cuts federal funding for places that BAN that list of activities. OTOH, it would be hilarious, and fitting given the original topic of this post, if a Republican from Texas actually proposed legislation that cut federal funding to schools if kids at the school were using their finger to simulate a gun.
Donut
@jamick6000:
Jesus fuck, why don’t you publish your own blog and you can use up all the bandwidth you like with your own favorite vocabulary and expressions.
Yatsuno
@Seanly: And Mormons. Lots and lots of Mormons. They do tend to evangelise hard. Otherwise your analysis is spot on. Plus I have liberal friends there, Boise can run to the blue side of purple, but it varies a lot. Kinda sad for one of the states that was huge in the labour movement.
Jebediah
@scav:
Well,I do now!
DavidTC
I think a lot of people are missing what ‘device’ means, and assuming it means _electronic_ device.
As far as I can tell, Florida also just banned _Monopoly_. Because, after all, it is a ‘system’ where you can insert money and get money back out, if a group of people decide to play with real money.
Granted, there is that word ‘insert’, which seems to imply a device that it is designed to insert money into…but the entire point of this was to shut down online gambling, so I suspect ‘insert’ does not require some sort of physical insertions of money.
And whatever ‘insert’ means, they appear to have definitively outlawed vending machines, which are obviously designed for people to insert money and return something of value.