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Hollywood Nervous About Kagan's Fair Use Views
Of the many commentaries and analyses springing up about Obama's Supreme Court nominee, this community might be most interested in one from the Hollywood Reporter. Reader Hugh Pickens notes that Hollywood may have reason to be nervous about the nomination of Elena Kagan to be the next US Supreme Court justice. "As dean of Harvard Law School from 2003 to 2009, Kagan was instrumental in beefing up the school's Berkman Center for Internet & Society by recruiting Lawrence Lessig and others who take a strongly liberal position on fair use in copyright disputes. And Kagan got an opportunity to showcase her feelings on intellectual property when the US Supreme Court asked her, as US Solicitor General, to weigh in on the big Cablevision case. 'After Cablevision announced in 2006 that it would allow subscribers to store TV programs on the cable operator's computer servers instead of on a hard-top box, Hollywood studios went nuts, predicting that the days of licensing on-demand content would be over,' writes Gardner. Kagan's brief compared remote-storage DVRs to VCRs (PDF), brought up the Sony/Betamax case, and lightly slapped Cablevision on the wrist for not making fair use a bigger issue. 'It sounds to us like Kagan would love the Court to determine when customers have a fair-use right to copy, which should cheer those on the copy-left at the EFF, and worry many in the entertainment industry.' On the minus side, Kagan has surrounded herself with entertainment industry advocates in the Justice Department."
A story on the Supreme Court appointment that's actually News for Nerds rather than Republocrat propaganda!
Pirate Party UK
I hope they're nervous. They need a little "fear" to keep them honest (or at least as honest as they can be considering they are the some of the greediest bastards on earth).
Looks like both Dem's & Rep's aren't exactly thrilled with everything Elena Kagan stands for. It always sounds like a good choice when neither side is happy with the possibilities.
Her name is on the Bilski brief submitted by the Obama administration:
No extant field of technology or industry--including software and diagnostic methods, the two fields addressed by numerous amici--is wholly excluded from patent protection under that approach;
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
but hopefully we'll see more articles such as this one, cementing her position. The sad truth is that people can be bought for the right price. The MPAA/RIAA have too much power in Washington right now. Hopefully she can withstand the payola and push some of that power down the toilet.
technology changes law. technology does not fit into the confines as defined by law, law adjusts and accommodates to new technology
and when law pits itself against technology, law always loses. technological progress has destroyed and swept aside so many legal, social, and political structures in this world
why does anyone believe hollywood stands a chance? the internet has permanently changed media distribution, in favor of the consumer. all that media companies can do is adapt, or die. of course, in the adaptation period, plenty of absurd attempts at preserving the legal status quos of past dead technological eras will be attempted, but this is just denial
in the end, we, the consumer, win. because technology empowers us to route around the old status quo. and if the law is pitted against the technology, then it also empowers us above the law (in this one narrow issue)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Usually, if the movie industry opposes a view or a law, that's because it benefits their customers more than it benefits them :-)
Living With a Nerd
I'm failing to see where she would be influenced by 'payola'. It's true that politics play a role in getting onto the Supreme Court. Once on the Supreme Court the only way she can lose her job is if the House of Representatives impeaches her, the Senate tries her, and she is convicted by a super-majority vote. Her salary can never go down. She will not have to face election. She will be guaranteed employment for life.
The only way she could accept payola is if she took an outright bribe. That's not unheard of as Clarance Thomas accepted a $1 million advance on his biography one week before issuing his ruling in Eldred v Ashcroft. Nevertheless, accepting a bribe is one of very few things that could ruin a Supreme Court justice's career.
That's a pair of neat tricks called, "reporting" and"journalism."
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Keep your eyes to the sky.
Hey, it's refreshing to hear of any public official actually being in favor of Fair Use.
I don't know how it'll play out, but considering the pro-corporate stance most have taken, I'm encouraged by the fact that she even knows Lawrence Lessig and has apparently some understanding of the issues involved.
Most of the Justices would just call up Jeff Bewkes and say "Whaddya think, Jeffie? You got it! Now can you get Seth Rogan to do standup at my nephew's birthday party"? (or, in Clarence Thomas' case, "Do you really know Jenna Jameson?")
You are welcome on my lawn.
Kagan: Hey, Barack. This software patent's issue is a real head scratcher. I can't find your stance on it. Can you remind me of it?
Obama: Elena, Elena, I'm busy. To be a patentable process, innovations should involve significant extra-solution activity i.e. activity central to the purpose of the claimed method. And don't forget that no patent can wholly pre-empt the use of a fundamental principle - and I don't just mean that a field-of-use restriction will suffice, I want to be sure that the algorithm can still be used for other purposes even in that same field.
Kagan: Thanks, I'll go fluff that out and add references. (done) Sorry to have bothered you, I simply don't have the power to come up with my own viewpoints, so I wanted to clarfy what yours are.
(...or just maybe it's not a purely clerical role and there's a bit of Kagan in the document she wrote and got approved by the president.)
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
I actually thought this was pretty good as a slashdot article since, hey, current events, but with a decidedly "stuff people argue about here all day long" take on it.
A great HuffPo Piece by none other than Lawrence Lessig, Mr. Creative Commons himself.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
It is what it is. If extremists on either side don't like her, that's probably a good thing.
I think that she looks like a really good pick so far. For me, it's all about personal freedom, and her more self-directed work seems to be big on free speech (which appears to be somewhat of a specialty).
There are some amicus briefs that she's authored as an advocate for someone else, but it's really hard to hold that against a lawyer doing her job.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
I don't see what's "liberal" about fair use.
I think people should stop trying to shoe-horn every single issue into a liberal/conservative spectrum.
Not going to happen.
Kagen has spent a career making her position as ambiguous as possible. The Republicans are attacking the former Dean of Harvard law school on experience, not on substance, which should tell you something.
When this goes to the senate the confirmation is going to hinge on democrats deciding whether they trust Obama or whether they ought to make sure that Steven's replacement doesn't shift the balance of power.
The USA has no law on software patents. The relevant law was written before anyone was manufacturing computers: Legislation in the USA
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
Bah, I couldn't find a better word for pressure, so I used payola. A bad word choice to be sure. You're absolutely right, hopefully a woman of her intelligence wouldn't accept something like that.
Holders of positions in the high courts are expected to set aside their personal views and opinions, and judge based on the law and the context in which the law was written.
She may have favored expanded fair use as the Dean of a school. But that does not mean that as a judge, she will be ruling in favor of expanded fair use more than she should, or in cases where a judge not in favor of expanded fair use would rule.
The job of a Judge is interpretation of the law, legislation and legislative context, and the constitution, based on legal principles, not based on personal views about what would be better for the public.
Some people need to realize it isn't just "the man" in hollywood. By ripping off shows and movies they are also hurting the folks who work with the CG departments, lighting and sound, construction etc. Many of these people make an average or slightly above average salary and when people don't pay for content these people suffer. With that being said, Hollywood needs to stop the blatant abuse of the copyright system. Fair use should be just that, FAIR. I should have the ability to use the content I paid for on any device and in any format I desire without jumping through the hoops of DRM. On top of that DRM servers are sure to go offline at some time due to age or greed which does nothing but force the consumer to re-buy what they already bought.
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
- Winston Churchill
You refer to the prophecy of The One who will bring balance to the Copyright. You believe it's this girl?
PARMGPA? You obviously have no clue how to properly create an acronym for an act.
First, you gotta come up with what you want the acronym to be. For the act in question, PETLOVE would seem to be a good one.
Next, you gotta come up with words that reduce to that acronym.
Protecting
Everyones
Timely
Lust
Of
Vertebrate
(rear)Ends
Apologies to those with invertebrate pets, I didn't want to spend any more time on this.
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
think about the changes the gun wreaked on the feudal system
think about the changes the printing press wreaked on traditional religious/ monarchical power structures
think about the changes the nuclear bomb wreaked on warfare and international relations
now think about the internet and its effects on copyright law
the technology came, and changed everything. time and time again
i'm not talking about civilian restrictions on dynamite or radar guns, these are tiny dots. i'm talking about the larger technological themes: the introduction of electronics, the introduction of sailing ships, the introduction of the cotton gin, etc. surely you can see how technology alter society and the law in ways no one can foresee or even understand when the technology is introduced. its not like the guys fiddling with the arpanet in the 1960s said "hey, lets destroy the recorded music industry", but that's what their invention is doing
surely you can see technological change trumps existing law, and law must alter itself and adapt
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
mgm vs grokster was unanimous. i think hollywood can live happily with 8 to 1 rulings. unfortunately it's going to take a lot more than one supreme court nominee to bring balance to america's copyright laws.
Dude, you're saying this in the middle of the largest financial crisis ever.
Compared to the overall size of the U.S. or world economy, is this depression bigger than the one that started in AD 1929?
Hollywood goons look like amateurs compared to Goldman Sachs.
Companies like Goldman Sachs can use spurious copyright claims to suppress those who expose the high crimes and misdemeanors of said companies. Sure, it's perjury, but businesses that have been deemed too big to fail have gotten away with worse.
The USA has no law on software patents.
From 35 USC 101: "Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title." A software patent covers an allegedly novel method of information processing; how is such a method not a "new and useful process"?
"that is, the most addictive+inebriating: cocaine, heroin, meth, etc (marijuana should be legal)"
What about alcohol? Withdrawal effects from alcohol are worse than from opiates -- in fact, they can be deadly without medical supervision. We sell tobacco to teenagers, yet tobacco dependency is more easily formed and more difficult to break than cocaine dependence.
"its not a war, its a maintenance function of civilization, like taking out the trash every thursday"
Well, let's see. Cocaine was first made illegal because people thought that when black men used cocaine, they would become unstoppable even with a gun. Yes, that sounds like a maintenance function of civilization to me...except for the racism part. Opiates, like heroin? Made illegal because of a belief that Asian immigrants would bring their habits with them to the USA -- even though heroin could be legally purchased over the counter, as marketed by Bayer. Yup, more maintenance, if we ignore the whole racism thing.
Unlike you, I actually know the history of the war on drugs, and it is not pretty. It is one racist act of congress after another, mixed with corporate lobbying, and recently we can add a profit motive for police departments. We are not talking about drug regulation here, nor are we talking about efforts to keep people healthy -- this is an effort to imprison people on a mass scale, particularly immigrants and black people. People are serving longer prison sentences for non-violent, drug related crimes than would be typical for a murder case.
The goal is not to "win," at least not as President Reagan defined victory (a "drug-free generation"). The goal is to increase the profits of pharmaceutical, alcohol, tobacco, prison, and firearms companies, and to keep an ever expanding police force employed. Racism is a convenient means to this end: you can arrest scores of black people for drug offenses (in some localities, one third of the black men are incarcerated), and nobody in the middle or upper classes will oppose it, especially not after seeing one image of a dangerous black man after another.
Regulation and health are things I am all for. You can regulate drugs without throwing millions of people in jail or creating police forces that are as heavily armed as the military. You can protect the general health of the population without propaganda and racism. The war on drugs is not helping our society, and I hope you understand that.
Palm trees and 8
What does being the dean of a Law School have to do with experience? That's academic experience, not experience practicing law.
This nominee has never, never, served as a judge before.
dynamite? plutonium? rocket propelled grenades? weaponized anthrax?
obviously these technologies need to be controlled
otherwise, what technologies can you possibly be talking about that has any merit on this subject matter?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It's certainly a point worth of discussion. If the GOP or anyone else want's to say that supreme court justices have to have had judicial experience, they're free to make that case. Historically, judicial experience has not been a requirement. Some of the most effective justices have come from politics, not the court room, including John Marshall, Thurgood Marshall, and Hugo Black, and William Rehnquist. Qualifications, like the confirmation process itself may have changed after the Bork nomination, so it's a point worthy of debate.
However, you better believe that if the GOP had ideological gripes they'd trot those out well before raising issues about qualifications.
When has a bag of heroin kicked in someone's door and shot family members? When has a 8 ball of cocaine taken someone's house, car and any other property that can be confiscated without recourse?
There is no drug worse than the drug war. Drug addicts need treatment, not incarceration (unless they did crimes which weren't the use of the drug). Drugs remaining illegal means that the prices are sky high, and people willing to do the illegal work can make lots and lots of money (so do the police intercepting them), this means that an addict has little hope of maintaining their addiction, and they will turn to crime to support it. If drugs were legal (or decriminalized) they would have much lower prices, the crime surrounding it would be heavily reduced, and addicts could receive help as there wouldn't be stigmas and they wouldn't risk jail.
Go read up on the drugs you're demonizing, read the studies done before they became illegal, then make a decision as to whether drugs are really worse than laws that remove constitutional rights, police states, and millions incarcerated for non violent crimes which hurt no one (besides themselves).
Seriously.
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
Why is it completely legal to link on a website to things like The Anarchist's Cookbook and other materials that can be used for seditious acts and mass murder...yet completely illegal if you link to copyrighted material?
SCOTUSBlog posted a nice, hysteria-free overview of Kagan's career a few days ago. It's well worth a read, and the authors seem to know a thing or two about the courts (unlike most reporters and pundits who have been covering the story).
If you read up on her career, you'll see that she has a great deal of respect for existing precedent, and doesn't seem to have allowed her own personal opinions to interfere with her past jobs.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
This is the closest I can get to formulating what exactly the "liberal" opinion is on fair use and copyright.
Heaven forbid anyone protect content providers from pirates who seek to profit off of the works of others.
That being said though, ripping your CD and DVDs and occasionally letting one of your friends get a copy isn't a threat to the RIAA and MPAA. I wish they'd realize this and go after the guys who are selling bootlegs on the street and tracking down the guys who are bulk importing pirated copies of Avatar and selling them on the street for $5 a disc.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
The Libertarian position is, protect the individual.
Unfortunately, that term has been hijacked as well, and carries very little meaning today. In fact, most Libertarians today are simply oligarchical states-rights activists (including Ron Paul).
Also, the "protection of the individual" argument actually forms the basis for classical liberalism, which does not necessarily advocate for a small government. (For instance, a government formed under this philosophy would ban smoking in public, and hand out tickets to drivers who aren't wearing seat belts. Taxation wouldn't be particularly redistributive, but the estate tax would need to approach 100%).
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
... they should love Obama's pick for her replacement as Solicitor General.
That is all.
I'm not lumping them all in together though.
You say cocaine and meth destroy lives, how much of that is due to the illegality?
Can't work if you're a user (no money).
Drug is expensive, but you have no job.
Drug comes before everything else in life.. life ruined.
or
Police come in arrest person for use of drug, take away family, throw person in jail.
Would it be different if the drug was legal, and this person could work in a minimum wage job to pay for the drug, and have plenty of opportunities to enter treatment, offered every time he goes to buy it from the drug store (for lack of a better term)?
I know a few ex heroin addicts, I know the damage it causes, but I've yet to see any positives to its illegality. Lots of criminals make very good money supplying it, lots of police time is wasted chasing it (and they can't even hope to intercept more than a few percent of the amounts that enter), lots of time is wasted in the judicial system, and many lives are destroyed when a parent is jailed for a few years, instead of in treatment for a month or so..
You understand that they're not going away, right? Even in countries where drug dealing gets you the death penalty you can still find drugs.
Sometimes wars can't be won.. unless you're fighting them for some entirely different reason (keeping the lower classes down).
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
1) Recruiting people does not mean you share their ideological views. Indeed, one of the selling points of Kagan (according to her supporters) is that in spite of her supposed liberal views she was able to recruit people from across the ideological spectrum, including conservatives, to Harvard Law School.
2) As the Solicitor General, you are a lawyer for the government. You argue their cases. We should not confuse positions she took as the Solicitor General with her own personal opinions on the cases.
If anyone wants the real story on Kagan (she's woefully unprepared for the Supreme Court) please read what Glenn Greenwald has recently been writing about her http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/04/13/kagan and a debate yesterday http://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/10/progressives_divided_over_obamas_nomination_of
So, when I was talking about propaganda, this is basically what I was referring to.
Do you know anything about the drugs you are talking about, or are you basing your argument on rumors and Hollywood movies? Let's clear a few things up:
What you should do is take some time to read a well researched article or book about substance abuse and dependence, and about the drugs you are so sure have the potential to destroy society. You seem to believe a lot of things that are not only untrue, but are frankly bizarre.
Palm trees and 8
no one is going to outlaw biochemistry, no one is going to outlaw physics
people ARE going to outlaw, and rightfully so (surely you can't say otherwise), working with SMALL SUBCLASSES of technology that only result in death and destruction
otherwise, you get stupid morons like this:
http://www.timw.com/2007/08/06/weird/radioactive-boy-scout-charged-in-smoke-detector-theft/
i understand your point completely, and your point is completely without merit
you apparently cannot tell the difference between large overall classes of technologies and small subclasses that deal in obviously dangerous topics that should be outlawed according to anyone. you apparently cannot tell the difference between, for example, outlawing something that might challenge a social dynamic, and outlawing something that makes people dead. the former is where law loses, the latter is where law is in the right, and will always be in the right, according to anyone not insane
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Although you make a fine argument.... and I agree nearly completely with what you say. I have come to the conclusion that I would rather abolish all drug legislation, and deal with the accompanying addicts, than have the blood of every man, woman, and child killed by police forces, or the black market organizations that spring up around this illegal activity on my conscience.
To save this subset of fools, you throw away basic rights, create a police state, and a have incarcerated more people than any other democratic nation (per capita and per percentage wise).
To save these fools, you've given a huge funding source to criminals, you've created billionaires in the rest of the americas who corrupt governments, own private armies and kill with impunity. This money also goes to fund war efforts for people like the taliban (heroin from afghanistan) FARC (cocaine) and countless others. Mafias worldwide thank you for keeping the prices of substances that cost very little to manufacture sky high.
We won't even get into the damage done to regular farmers in drug areas, their crops sprayed with herbicides because they're near a coca plantation, threatened and forced into slavery by the people who control the drug trade, etc etc.
The drug war has a gigantic price tag in any sense you want, human, rights, money, no single substance that people use to get inebriated can ever do that sort of damage.
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
Wow.
Just wow.
It's rare to come across people outside politics and thwe church choir who are so utterly utterly blinkered.
It's particularly funny because you use the example of the mafia.
free and unfettered access to the most addictive/inebriating drugs leads to a reasonably stable population of people who freely choose to take drugs.
So for the sake of saving lives from the hell of addiction, and preserving civilization from this infection, there will ALWAYS be a war on alcohol, forever. the war on alcohol is a permanent aspect of every civilization that ever existed and ever will. or at least that's what people believed during that excercise in futility known as Prohibition.
If it is fought, you create a zombie underclass of addicts and a financially fattened mafia.(try reading about prohibition, the exact same lines you're peddling were dragged out whenever people talked about legalization with the exact same justifications. It was people like you who handed the mafia power and money on a silver platter by trying to enforce their morals on everyone else)
surely you see this is far far worse for the individual and society than the side effects of any addictive substance, right?
I don't actually believe addiction to cocaine/meth/heroin/alcohol/tobbaco/caffine is harmless. I do believe that orders of magnitude more lives are destroyed by the futile fight against individuals wishes to be self destructive. the war on drugs has many negative effects on society.Many many negative effects on society. Far more than the drugs ever would. For something like marijuana, legalization is the solution.
I hope you understand this
Wait, the best word you could think of that means "pressure" was "payola", not "pressure"? O.o
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
"but for the highly inebriating+highly addicting, you have a substance that overrides willpower, causing you to want to do nothing except zone out for hours, unable to maintain a job or relationship, and become caught in a biochemical feedback cycle that overwhelms all other desires in your life save one: more, more, more... you can't cope with any joy or depression in your life without resorting to the substance. nothing in your life becomes possible without the substance. you are now a slave. "
Alcoholics trying to quit will eat boot polish, steal, become violent and that's pretty similar to the decriptions I've heard from them.
"free access to only the worst substances zombifies people, making them unable to support themselves (and then society has to support them). therefore, society sees that it is cheaper to simply prevent the creation of such zombies in the first place (and additionally, preserve the free will of those who would otherwise become slaves to a substance)"
By what possible measure could the "war on drugs" ever be cheaper?
Addiction counciling is orders of magnitude cheaper than keeping someone in jail for a decade.
The crime and violence caused by lucrative drug markets created by the war on drugs cost society far more than feeding and sheltering the far end of the curve who completely go off the rails.
"you don't actually believe addiction to cocaine/ meth/ heroin is harmless"
I don't but I also believe you have no right whatsoever to decide that people have some kind of a duty to do only what is good for them. Freedom isn't freedom unless you are free to do stupid things and harm yourself.
cocaine?heroin?meth?
Cocaine is surprisingly similar to caffine in many ways.
If anything it's the form that people take it in which makes it dangerous.
And the war on drugs and retarded drug laws encourage highly concentrated and potent forms of the drugs which are also the most dangerous.
It's as if someone sat down and thought
"how can we make this problem worse than it already is?"
"Oh I know, lets create a situation where addicts have to pay more for their drugs so they steal and commit crimes to support their habbit!"
"Oh and we could create a situation where the quality of the drugs is far lower causing more medical problems!"
"Oh and lets make it so that the suppliers have an incentive to increase their market by getting new users addicted!"
"And we could then start shitting all over the constitution and justify it by saying we have to do it to deal with all the problems we just created!!! FANTASTIC!!!!"
No. They aren't. The destruction of freedom wrought by the War on (Some) Drugs is far, far worse than the effects of any drug.
No, it doesn't. Look at all the cocaine and opiate addicts and users who have made their mark on the arts and sciences: Freud, Halsted (the "father of modern surgery"), Belushi, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Jules Verne, Popes Leo XIII and Pius X, President McKinley, Robin Williams, Robert DeNiro, Jack Nicholson, Percy Shelly, Cole Porter, Richard Pryor...I could go on and on.
Which is not to say that cocaine and opiate use are healthy choices or that I'm endorsing them; only that drug prohibition magnifies the negative effects of drug use, creates a violent black market, is corrosive to liberty, and anyone who favors it is either ignorant, stupid, or wicked.
So, look: you're simply ignorant and wrong about drugs and their effects. And yet you're willing to point guns at people and lock them in cages to control their behavior. You should be ashamed.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
yes I get where you're coming from: you;ve arbritrarily decided that people should be allowed hurt/kill themselves and get addicted but only to drugs which are slightly slower at killing them.
The SUBSTANCE ITSELF is not good or bad.
If people were being unknowingly injected with heroin while they slept that would be a problem.
If people were having alcohol funneled into their mouths while they were passed out that would be a problem.
But I don't give a shit if someone of their own free will chooses to start taking something which is bad for them be it cyanide pills or cough-syrup.
My body is my body. Not yours.
My health is my health. Not yours.
It doesn't matter if a drug causes me to die on the spot or get a happy feeling, it's my death, not yours.
You have no right to arbritrarily decide that I can't do things you think are bad for me.
There is a whole world of casual idiots who get a chance to leap off a bridge every single day of their lives.
Obviously we need to ban bridges.
FOR THEIR PROTECTION!
So...regulate the sale of opiates? The problem in China was not opium in general, it was the fact that they were being flooded with opium and there was not sufficient regulation.
We already regulate the sale of opiates like morphine, codeine, and fentanyl. Why not simply add heroin to that list? You are so terrified of heroin, and so convinced that nobody could possibly use heroin without abusing it, that you are happy to live in a society where the police carry AR-15s and where the prisons are overflowing with inmates and we are still continuing to arrest people. You seriously need to get a grip and calm down, and stop making unwarranted assumptions about the effect of legal, regulated drugs.
Palm trees and 8
You seem massively deluded in one important respect:
I could buy all the heroin, meth or cocaine I wanted.
I could buy ectsacy in most of the clubs on a night out.
Drugs are not remotely hard to get your hands on.
I get casual offers in some clubs.
I have no interest in them any more than I do tobbacco which is almost as easy to buy(gotta have ID for that).
You've decided that it's somehow your duty or right to protect all those casual idiots from themselves even though it's their lives and none of yours buisness.
"By what possible measure could the "war on drugs" ever be cheaper?"
Actually, there are a lot of places where the war on drugs has become self-funded -- where property confiscated during a drug arrest can be auctioned off and the money kept by the police department that performed the arrest (this includes the DEA). With a sufficient number of drug arrests, this allows the vice squads to fund themselves, shifting the cost away from the tax payers themselves.
Before you argue that this simply shifts the costs from police to prison, remember that prison costs are often offset by prison labor and privatization. This creates a rather convenient situation: the police profit from drug arrests by keeping the property of the accused, and the prisons get to use their prisoners to turn a profit on cheap labor. Yes, it is pillaging and slavery, and no, our society has not quite moved past such behavior.
Palm trees and 8
It was pre-coffee this morning, please forgive.
You're quite right.
It is modern day pillaging and slavery.
With a thin venere of justification.
but when offered casual use in a carefree environment, get zombified. this is what the illegality prevents: the destruction of the lives of the carefree casual idiot
So you're aware that Portugal basically legalized drugs some years ago, without any notable zombie apocalypse of the kind you hypothecate?
Drugs are bad... we agree on that.
There's a large quantity of actual, empirical data that legalization of most drugs and medicalization of addiction is by far the least costly, most effective, social response to drug addiction. And by "least costly" I mean in all senses, particularly in terms of mangled lives of innocents.
You seem to have passed from "drugs are bad" to "the American War on (some) Drugs is absolutely justified in all of its destructive excess" without ever bothering to even consider the possibility that there might be more humane and effictive alternatives to police-state intervention in individual's lives.
Since it is clearly an issue you feel passionately about you would do well to educate yourself on the most effective means of combating the very real problems that drug use creates, rather than just knee-jerking in zombie-like support of the security-industrial complex and their counter-productive, destructive, inhumane and ineffective policy of criminalization and incarceration.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Are free-speech advocates called "speech-nuts"
Some news outlets call crowds of sign-carrying protesters things like that when they engage in organized protests outside major meetings of politicians.
There was nothing in District of Columbia v. Heller that would apply to DMCA.
Then let me clarify my position: Tools to break encryption could be considered "arms" if they are used to break a foreign military's DRM or "banned circumvention devices" if they are used to break an entertainment conglomerate's DRM. If the circumvention ban of the DMCA is not invalid under the Second Amendment, and terrorists start using AACS and other DRM systems originating from MPAA members, then the terrorists have already won.
> And Kagan got an opportunity to showcase her feelings on intellectual
> property when the US Supreme Court asked her, as US Solicitor General, to
> weigh in on the big Cablevision case.
Not her views. She was repersenting the adminstration. He personal views may or may not be the same as those she presented on behalf of her employer.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
No, you misunderstand the meaning of the term "regulation" -- alcohol is regulated, tobacco is regulated, and other drugs should be regulated. We should not be sending a paramilitary force like the DEA after people who have some heroin, which is exactly what you are in favor of.
Consider yourself un-American, since you think our government should be in the business of imprisoning mass numbers of its citizens.
Palm trees and 8
has destroyed more freedom than any totalitarian government, religious fundamentalism, or any other government abuse you can think of in the history of mankind
unlike you, i actually understand and acknowledge what something like heroin does to a person: the bars int he mind of addiction is the purest form of freedom destruction imaginable
furthermore, in the name of alcohol and tobacco regulation, government agents have imprisoned mass numbers of citizens, and will continue to do so, and you support this, because oyu understand the rationale behind it. but not for heroin?!
as an american, someone who fights for and loves freedom, i am apparently more knowledgeable and have a better grasp of the subject matter than you and how freedom is maximized: the limitation of the spread of a freedom destroying substance
you argue form a position of ignorance: an ignorance of the subject matter. therefore your opinion is not only invalid, but dangerous to the very concept you care about
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
please tell me: if you let heroin be freely available to anyone who wanted it, exactly what would happen to such a society?
i'm too ignorant and uneducated to imagine what would happen. i'm too busy trying to destroy people's freedoms
k thx!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
you'll see that the word "People" is capitalized, which in regard to the Constitution means it refers to the government
I disagree, and so does this Source. Look at the Constitution prior to Amendments, and see how much was capitalized. Also look at some Printings of Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World by Jonathan Swift and find the Nouns that are not capitalized. It was the Fashion at the Time to capitalize English much like modern German, starting Nouns with capital Letters. Otherwise, what was so special about, for Example, the "limited Times" referred to in the eighth Section of the first Article? And does this "Republican Form of Government" refer to anything like the GOP?
She also argued that prosecutors who deliberately manufacture evidence to convict innocent people should not be civilly liable for their actions.
Before you use her participation in support of the Pottawattamie prosecutors to extrapolate her entire character, I recommend reading the Pottawattamie County v. McGhee article over at SCOTUSWiki. Among other things, you'll find out that even the McGhee and Harrington side of the case agrees that prosecutors "enjoy immunity when they knowingly introduce false testimony during trial" based on the 1976 SCOTUS decision in Imbler v. Pachtman. All the legal wrangling was over drawing lines across contiguous situations, like whether or not that immunity extends to pre-trial conditions. The central idea of immunity for prosecutors during trial apparently wasn't even really being questioned, because much of the lawyering world apparently believes that if you open prosecutors to liability, it'll have a "chilling effect" on their ability to pursue justice even in situations where the defendant is guilty as sin because of the threat of being buried under lawsuits.
Now, from an ethical and liberty-focused perspective, I completely agree that a lot of this is ridiculous. I think that fabricating evidence is flat-out simply beyond the job description of any state officer, and so by definition, whether or not it happened pre-trial or during the trial, it's outside of official prosecutorial duties and can and should incur criminal and civil liability. But there are beings who walk the earth who see court cases very differently than a normal citizen does, who don't operate directly on matters of ethics and policy and justice and liberty, but instead on the law as the instrument which serves those matters, and who apparently see a prosecutors role as such an important one in actually pursuing justice that it's deserving of considerable latitude. I disagree and I think there's a cultural problem here that needs to be addressed by legal means: we're apparently going to need a law stating that fabrication of evidence is explicitly outside any public duty and that no immunity of any kind applies.
I'm unimpressed by Kagan's advocacy, and think everybody should contact their Senator -- particularly if they've got one that's on the judiciary committee -- if for no other reason to highlight this issue, which hasn't received anywhere near its due attention, but flogging Kagan in particular for it probably isn't going to address a systemic problem.
Tweet, tweet.
And of course the politicians only cared about money, that never changes. Before income tax one of the largest federal sources of revenue was an excise tax on alcohol. The 16th amendment allowed a federal income tax, creating an alternate source of revenue that paved the way for prohibition. And again it took the allure of taxes from alcohol, now on top of the federal income tax, to repeal prohibition. The problem now, as you mentioned, is that there is an entrenched industry relying on the continued criminalization of drugs and a stigma that outweighs potential tax revenues.
Eldred v. Ashcroft was decided 7-2. Are you saying they bribed him in order to avoid a 6-3 or 5-4 decision? If so, with what were the other justices bribed?
No, they aren't. The effects of heroin addiction are constipation, and withdrawal that makes you feel like you have the flu when you don't get your fix. The effects of the War on (Some) Drugs is innocent people being gunned down in blitzkrieg raids, the highest incarceration rate on the planet, the continual erosion of civil liberties, and paranoia in people -- like yourself -- who are unfamiliar with the drugs in question.
Richard Pryor was "victorian upper middle class"?
Except of course those are a tiny fraction of the people you're locking up. You're locking up recreational users who aren't hurting anyone, junkies who are harmless so long as they can get their fix, and small time dealer who are no more heartless than the guy at 7-11 who sells cigarettes and booze.
Friend, I'm from Baltimore. Don't tell me what easy access to highly addictive substance does; abut 10% of the adults in the city are heroin users. Most are harmless. For the rest, prohibition only adds to their problems, while it pumps up the murder rate and corrodes the morale and ethics of local police.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Agreed.
I just worry about the extent to which corporations with unchecked power will go in order to protect their positions.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I have no mental block when it comes to the concept that addiction itself is a harm.
You on the other hand seem to have an extremely solid block over the fact that you have zero right to control other peoples lives be it for their own good or for your own desires.
It's a hell of a lot more expensive to pay for the damage caused by the crimes, the police to arrest, the border agents to look for drugs, the prison officers to guard and the cell around him than to just provide subsidized heroin to an addict.
Heroin addicts are surprisingly functional when they're able to obtain heroin.
Your approach just takes a moderate problem and turns it into an awful problem.
i'm asking you to consider if the war on drugs FOR ONLY THESE WORST DRUGS is less of a negative than the drugs themselves
I understand. I hear. And I reject. The war on crack or smack or heroin or whatever is *always* worse than the drug itself.
do you feel where i am coming from yet?
Why are you not listening to those talking to you. They understand exactly what you are saying, and they disagree. Why can you not understand this?
Learn to love Alaska
It is also absurd to claim that Thomas would have in any case broken with the majority and joined Stevens and Breyer in dissent. An 8-1 decision in the other direction with Thomas in dissent would be considerably more plausible.
then learn your history, before it is repeated, fool:
I learned my history. The English had a trade deficit with China, so they turned to illegal goods to get the most bang for the buck. When China worked to stop the English government from importing illegal goods, England sent over a military force to attack.
That drugs were the illegal good is irrelevant. That you assert some harm was because of the drugs is irrelevant. The Opium Wars were about England asserting their domination over the planet.
in the history of the world, the sum total of every fascist, totalitarian, despotic, religious fundamentalist, and autocratic authoritarian law has, by orders of magnitude, never even remotely touched the freedom that was destroyed in terms of wasted lives due to drug addiction.
You are wrong. Drugs have been taken responsibly for thousands of years. It's only after making them illegal did we have the problems we have now. Making drugs illegal is what caused the drug problem.
Learn to love Alaska
You can also make a good argument that ending the war on drugs would do a hell of a lot more toward reducing the homicide rate than any other legislative measure.
"technology changes law. technology does not fit into the confines as defined by law, law adjusts and accommodates to new technology"
This quote came from an insightful post I read recently. Perhaps you should think about it in regard to this thread?
Only she's not nearly as attractive.
No, we don't have legal drugs in any way, shape or form. I know, I've wanted pot for ages now.
What we have is decriminalization of use, and even then you can't possess much and you have to agree to counseling.
Sorry, but we're no heaven.