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Anti-Speed Camera Activist Buys Police Department's Web Domain
Brian McCrary just bought a website to complain about a $90 speeding ticket he received from the Bluff City PD — the Bluff City Police Department site. The department let its domain expire and McCrary was quick to pick it up. From the article: "Brian McCrary found the perfect venue to gripe about a $90 speeding ticket when he went to the Bluff City Police Department's website, saw that its domain name was about to expire, and bought it right out from under the city's nose. Now that McCrary is the proud owner of the site, bluffcitypd.com, the Gray, Tenn., computer network designer has been using it to post links about speed cameras — like the one on US Highway 11E that caught him — and how people don't like them."
Traffic law enforcement is a complicated issue in my mind. I don't have a lot of sympathy for speeders who don't like paying speeding tickets, but I do think there's a reason that speeding is the only moving violation you really see enforced these days (and I don't think "safety" has much to do with it).
That aside, there are lots of things wrong with typical camera-enforcement schemes. They tend to be operated by private firms who profit off of the tickets. (This is a bigger problem with red-light cameras, because light timings can be manipulated for revenue-genration purposes, but I digress...)
Also, they usually don't even try to prove who's driving. For example, here in St. Louis County, a camera-enforced ticket is a non-moving violation. It's like a parking ticket - the ticket is against the vehicle, not the driver. They don't try to prove who's driving and they don't care - the owner of the vehicle gets the ticket. This also means no points on the license; the "enforcement" is purely monitary.
He gets enjoyment for the $80. He got nothing but frustration for the $90. Sounds to me like the former is money well spent, and the latter not so much.
Technically, squatting isn't competition. It's extortion: they're forcing you to pay an excessive amount for something that should cost $6. I was looking for a business domain a while back, and I couldn't believe how many domain names were being squatted on. Anything even remotely related to business was already taken, most of them by squatters. We ended up paying a squatter $1000 to get the name that this business legally owned a trademark to. I wonder what would happen if the first-time registration costs for .com was raised significantly and the "free refund" policy was revoked, forcing squatters actually pay for resources they're effectively stealing.
Apparently, a lot of squatters play the float - they register and then unregister domain names just inside the free refund period. Between that and the $6 registration fee, one person can tie up hundreds of domain names very cheaply.
That would be called harassment, and pretty soon you'd find a district attorney involved.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Up here in Dallas, they seem to set speed limits based on driving revenue. Central Expressway, I-35(E/W), and 635 are all 60 MPH. Dallas North Tollway, 121, and PGBT are 70. The difference being you pay about $1.50 per 10 miles on the latter group. Gee, wonder why they upped the speed limit? Maybe to get more people to use them and get more money for the NTTA?
Doesn't stop everyone and their brother from doing 85 on Central, of course.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Erm... sorry man but I have to point out that the National Speed Limit of 55mph was intended to reduce gasoline consumption by 2.2% in response to the 1973 oil crisis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Maximum_Speed_Law
So in this case the "reason" wasn't safety, it was financial which I believe may be in line with the main article and the opinion of many other posters here.
With some googling I found out that in the year 2000 15,517 people were murdered while 41,611 died in car accidents. That means that if we could prevent all car accidents the benefit in human lives would be almost three times greater.
You might only be driving 55 on a 50 mph zone, but a lot of people are driving much faster and statistics show it is fairly dangerous.
Where are these stastics that say ignoring the speed limit and driving the road for what it was built for is "fairly dangerous"? I seem to have found some statistics that claim quite the opposite(pdf warning).
Moreover, by your rationale, I shouldn't be allowed to eat butter or salt as more people die from heart attacks than from car accidents or murders combined. Or to flip it, since you'll likely try to spin this as something I'm doing to you; no one should be allowed to serve things containing cholesterol or salt.
-- ...only life can kill you