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Woo! Big miss! The landlord (by default) CANNOT just come in without proper notice, at least by PA Landlord-Tenant Law.

First of all, I didn't say anything regarding whether or not the landlord must give notice, merely that the landlord does indeed have the right to enter (yes, even according to your PA Tenant-Landlord Laws). Pretty much all state laws provide for landlord inspection, granted many have qualifications (i.e. must give 24 hour's notice, broken pipe, etc). However, having worked in the multi-family Real Estate business for 10 years in my past, I can tell you that there is a lot of fluidity with regard to interpretation on this law. I can't count how many people have tried (and failed....all of them) to drum up some right-to-privacy lawsuit because they felt that they could keep the landlord out of their place at any cost. It just flatly isn't true. Also, if you really want to get down and dirty, there are those types who might go in and "create" a broken pipe which would give them the "emergency" they need to go it. Not saying it's ethical, but I've seen it happen.

You are right that the landlord analogy doesn't really apply, and neither does your anecdote. In fact, the Terry Childs case would be like if the maintenance man changed all the locks but refused to give the master key to the landlord (not another maintenance person). If you'd read the facts of the case, you'd know that it wasn't some "unauthorized" person who was asking for the passwords:

hat afternoon Childs "unwittingly" found himself in a surprise meeting in the city's Hall of Justice, where he maintained network facilities. At the meeting were his boss, DTIC Chief Operations Officer Richard Robinson, San Francisco Police Department CIO Greg Yee and human resources representative Vitus Leung.

Abbie Hoffman is rolling in his grave.

In any event, the salary and employment of federal judges is guaranteed for life (unless they are impeached by Congress and removed from office), so corruption of federal judges is very rare; they have too much job security and are paid too well to risk it.

Right, this judge and this one not to mention, this one. Hell one even sent children to detention many times
The biggest whopper was the Pirate Bay judge who got them convicted. But then he's in Sweden and not in US.

Anything built to be affordable will end up being rent controlled, at a huge loss to the landlord. Why take the risk? Either build luxury apartments or don't build at all.

While that argument might hold water for someone building rental units, it is meaningless for building condos with the intent to sell, not rent. The financial crisis wasn't trigger by people failing to pay their rent, it's about an artificially high barrier to property ownership.

A word on the "evils" of rent control:
I'm renting a non-luxury non-rent controlled or stabilized apt right now. My last apt wasn't luxury or rent stabilized either, and my rent went up 48% in three years because my neighborhood gentrified. So I had to move (and pay a broker for the privilege). Rent control isn't the huge loss that landlord try to hack it up to be, if the building is turning a profit when they build it, it will be turning a profit ten years down the line even if the apts are rent controlled, because the landlord's mortgage didn't go up and the rent control with keep property taxes down, what the landlords are whining about is that they can't maximize their profits (and boot out long time tenets) with every neighborhood gentrification wave, there is a big difference between making a modest profit and taking a loss, and no landlords are actually taking a loss on buildings with rent controlled apts. Added to that,rent stabilization doesn't apply to anything built since '84.

I like your example, but I have known people to routinely purchase a newspaper from a rack, and then place the entire stack of papers on top of the rack as a gift to passersby. Check out Steal This Book by Abbie Hoffman.

Perhaps some conscientous person who was going to purchase a paper might put in a quarter and replace the rest of the stack. I never saw that and I must admit that at the time, it didn't occur to me.

Good luck with that "withholding rent" strategy. Ever tried it?

What you are claiming isn't true and landlords know it.

1. New York State
2. Boston
3. Oregon State Bar standard withholding form letter
4. Tenant's Legal Guide
5. Pennsylvania housing code

What you are claiming isn't true and landlords know it. You will find yourself in court with a nice judgement against you and probably evicted as well.

The eviction takes time. The judgement not as long.

Steal This film

IN 2006, A GROUP OF FRIENDS DECIDED TO MAKE A FILM ABOUT FILESHARING THAT *WE* WOULD RECOGNISE. THERE HAVE BEEN A FEW DOCUMENTARIES BY 'OLD MEDIA' CREWS WHO DON'T UNDERSTAND THE NET AND SEE PEER-TO-PEER ORGANISATION AS A THREAT TO THEIR LIVELIHOODS. THEY HAVE NO REASON TO REPRESENT THE FILESHARING MOVEMENT POSITIVELY, AND NO CAPACITY TO REPRESENT IT LUCIDLY.

"Avoid all needle drugs. The only dope worth shooting is Richard Nixon." -- Steal This Book
"Free speech means the right to shout 'theatre' in a crowded fire."
"You measure a democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists."
"Revolution is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade. It is a perpetual process embedded in the human spirit."

"...Steal This Book..."
Not only available, but free online. Making it hard to steal, but still... ;)
I read it in the day and parts haven't aged real well. Still lots of good stuff though>

Sorry, have to differ with you there. I don't want a tac nuke in private hands, because I don't believe you're capable of only hitting those who are actually posing a threat to you personally. I also wouldn't let you have land mines, pursuant to the common law principle of prohibiting reckless endangerment.

great post, btw.

3) Start your own company. Helps if you have a fixer who can get you signed with Satan.

4) Commit Suicide. This choice is always an option. Gotta keep your options open.

5) [could be 3] Group several fellow unemployed people together;
group a few employed ones with them;
institute a food conspiracy with eventual plans of self-sustained life;

6) [my choice] create art representative of the situation and hope for the best.

Could someone explain to me why these people are whining online rather that suing?

In his book, Steal This Book, the late 60's activist Abbie Hoffman described a way to get a free Las Vegas vacation by taking advantage of promotional schemes offered by casinos. The casino would fly you free to Vegas and give you free room and meals, provided you bought a certain amount of casino chips. These were specially marked chips that could not be cashed in, assuring that you would gamble them away.

Hoffman's counterscheme was simple. Two people go on this trip together. One person takes the special chips and the other person buys an equal amount of normal chips. They sit down at a roulette table and preceed to bet against each other, one betting on red, the other on black. Between them they will break even on every spin (except when the wheel comes up 00). The person with the special chips bets only those chips. Every win is paid off in normal chips. Every loss of a special chip is converted to a normal chip in the other person's pile. When all the special chips are gone the two people should have almost the same amount they started with (except for 00 spins). At that point they get up and cash in, and the trip costs them nothing.

Theoretically one person could do this alone, because you should win almost 50% of the time, but in practice this is not always the outcome in the short term. Using two people makes it foolproof (assuming Guido doesn't follow you out to the alley).

I'm not a Vegas kind of guy, but am fascinated with schemes like this and the ones in The Eudaemonic Pie. I wonder if casinos still offer this sort of deal, or if it is so simple to beat that they don't bother anymore?

here

Here's hoping you successfully fight the Amerikan corporatist pigs and make the world a better place. I envy Abbie's brain power. His plan sounds exactly like a world I want to live in.. a place where the chosen flag is a red star against a black black with a marijuana leaf on top of the star.. and where you have to watch your back no matter who you are.

Down with the Amerikan corporatist pigs!

And Rosa Parks would smack you upside the head silly if she found out you were associating her with a bunch of uppity Yippies who don't just want P2P but the right to all the music for free. Yes, Rosa Parks is still alive.

Moral of the story: if you are going to put words in someone else's mouth, at least choose someone who's already in the grave.

Before you start complaining too much about people downloading music illegally, consider where the money from CD purchases is going, the majority of which is going to the record companies, not even the artist anyways.

Yeah, the money goes to the marketers, the CD case artists and photographers, sound engineers, makeup artists, building owners, electricity companies, truck drivers, loss leaders (promotional materials.. and if Slashdotters get their way, the music itself), and other crap that people take for granted. If you don't want to pay for all that overhead, fine. Buy from independent musicians. There's no need to try to invalidate the copyright laws, unless you too also want to hurt the independent musicians. Unless of course independent musicians are the good guys and you only steal from Amerikan corporatist pigs. But please don't try to make yourself look righeous by saying the artists would rather you copy their works for free than them receiving the 0.001 cent per CD commission (or whatever exaggeration Slashdotters are using today), because it's NOT TRUE. You do not represent the whole of the RIAA artists. They'd probably be working at 7-11 if it weren't for the RIAA.

After this review, I'm more interested in the Hoffman book than the Wang book.

Apparently you haven't read this yet. ;)

I think it's ironic that the Hoffman book is found online in it's entirety after being brought to mind by a book about copyright protection and IP law. The universe has a strange sense of humor/justice...

You might want to read this and this before considering trying to become a lawyer.

In New York state, the maximum you can sue for in Small Claims Court is $3K. That's less than half of what you're owed. But in Small Claims, everybody represents themselves -- so there are no legal fees. You pay a fee to file and that's it.

Now, it's gonna do you no good to sue Madster or any of Deep's other shell entities. He'll just pull the "There's no money!" trick one more time. Instead, you should sue Deep himself. Claim that Deep acted deceitfully and never meant to give you your money. Document as much weirdness as you can -- the weird payroll cycle, the nonsense of one part of the business having hardware money when another didn't even have payroll money... There's probably more if you look for it.

At worst, the judge will just shoot down your legal theory, and you'll be out a filing fee and some time. But you'll still have the satisfaction of confronting Deep in person and documenting his dishonesty in a public forum.

Unless, of course, Deep chooses to ignore the proceedings. In which case you win by default!

In .au you can only increase rents once per year, and only if the fixed term of the lease agreement has expired.

Well, naturally, you can not change the terms half-way through.

You also can not increase the rent by an unfair amount. What's unfair? If the tenant thinks it's unfair then someone from the Office of Fair Trading comes along and makes that decision.

Terrible! So you trust this "Office of Fair Trading" more than you trust your own ability to find a decent appartment at a decent price? To each his own, I guess... Why can you charge what you wish for a car, a stereo, or a pair of shoes, but for an appartment? Then, again, may be, this "Office of Fair Trading" controls prices on all those things too in Australia...

Now getting back on-topic. What you have just demonstrated is that goverment regulation, when not well thought out (aka the New York rental market) is a BAD thing. But goverment regulation which is well thought out (aka the .au rental market) is a good thing.

Actually, a whole bunch of wheenies think the government should regulate even more in here. According to them, the government regulation is good, there just should be more of it.

On the other hand, we only know, that in Australia things are tipsy-turvy, from you. I'd venture a guess, that a number of people in .au think otherwise, and can offer horror stories of "Fair Trade" employess.

when he published "Steal This Book".

"It's embarrassing you try to overthrow the government and you wind up on the Best Seller's List."
-- Abbie Hoffman

(quote stolen from above link to boost /my/ karma)