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Seinfeld's Good Samaritan Law Now Reality?
e3m4n writes "The fictitious 'good samaritan' law from the final episode of Seinfeld (the one that landed them in jail for a year) appears to be headed toward reality for California residents after the house passed this bill. There are some differences, such as direct action is not required, but the concept of guilt by association for not doing the right thing is still on the face of the bill."
I'm surprised that the USA does not already have a bill like this. In other countries (e.g. Germany) helping people in need is mandatory. You are also encouraged to give CPR and if you fail at it and make it worse you are not charged (otherwise people would be too scared of screwingn up and never administer CPR at all).
I always hated these, because to me it makes no sense to read but not do steps 1-4, and then to read and execute step 5 or 6. Therefore after reading them, you SHOULD go back and start executing the steps in order, 2-4 occur before they are negated, the 5 tells you to stop, and then you finish.
Of course, I get the point of the test. But it's like some guy on the internet playing teacher correcting your spelling while making god awful grammatical errors.
In conclusion, pedantic lessons suck.
You can get 15 minutes of fame, but you can go down in history for infamy.
This can easily be seen as a violation of the 5th amendment. This would force anyone who doesn't report a crime they might or might not have been involved in to face charges for not reporting the crime unless they report the crime and, in turn, incriminate themselves. IANYAL
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Actually, 20 people calling at the same time may very well be needed, if one person calls the operator may just decide that they're full of shit or that it's just one person overreacting, I once called 112, the swedish equivalent of 911, after finding a passed out beaten up and drunk man in a ditch, they essentially told me "no ambulances are available right now, take care of him yourself", I called them three more times before they finally relented and decided to send a police car to take the guy to the hospital, took the police about two minutes to get there which was pretty impressive considering I had been told in previous calls that all police units and ambulances were in a neighboring town some 25 km away due to a large number of festival-related disturbances*.
* This touches on another issue I have with emergency operators, if you only have one "spare" unit don't tell me there are no units in town, you don't think I'll figure out that you were lying to me once you realize I'm calling about a real emergency?
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
What he didn't state were the instructions for those tests. The instructions specifically state to read every question before answering any of them. It's not a test, but a lesson in reading and following the instructions. As such, I think it has great value.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
The right to remain silent (which comes from the fifth amendment) includes the right to not talk to police. About anything, really. And since nobody can really know ALL the laws, simply reporting an observed crime to the police could very well incriminate you in some crime, either the crime you're reporting or something else (watching a cock fight? illegal. Being out after curfew? Illegal. Who knows what laws you might have violated simply by being there, and when you report this crime, you're telling them that you were there.) For more on this -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08fZQWjDVKE