But you have to use caution in what you say because "disgusting and unsanitary" are not permited to operate by most of the laws. So even when your value system places them lower, the state says it is X and you will most likely be bound by the state's standards seeing how they are written in law or with the effect of law.
The person said that they found it disgusting and unsanitary when they visited it. It's perfectly possible that the place was in violation of the law at that time, but has been in compliance since then. The person is referring to a single visit as far as I can tell, so I don't see how it could be proved to be defamatory.
But the statement, as cited in the article, could not be proven slanderous without a thorough audit of the sanitation at all the restaurants the speaker has visited. And the burden of proof is not on the defense.
Worse, the audit of the plaintiff's restaurant would have had to have taken place at the time of the defendant's visit, since that's what they are referring to. It could have been cleaned up since then. There's simply no way to prove defamation/slander here.
While putting forward a damages claim of a few dollars as might be representative of the actual ingringement might be more accurate, it would clearly not be any sort of deterrent. However, rather than putting up stupidly high sums of damages as the RIAA as currently chasing, might it not be a better "everybody wins" solution to make the ruling along the lines of $5 for damages plus ten hours community service as a punishment.
You do understand that we're talking about a few dollars per song, which would add up to a fair amount if the RIAA is correct that people are transferring huge amounts of music. It's still much more reasonable than the hundreds or thousands per song that they're trying to get now, which really does seem like extortion.
The problem they face then is that MediaDefender is not licensed to do the investigations, and they probably can't get licensed because their methods most likely wouldn't be legal. If we have to have this hugely complicated legal system, we might as well try to make it help out the little guys once in a while too.
The unjust law that says you can't take copies of their music without paying for it? Yeah, that's right up there with slavery, British oppression of India, and Jim Crow. Civil disobedience will show those oppressive bastards. Give me Britney Spears for free, or give me death!
More like the unjust laws that grant a virtually perpetual monopoly over information, with less and less consideration of the public interest with each passing piece of legislation.
I've been told that in Michigan if you are not convicted you can file to have your fingerprints pulled from the database. I don't know how it works elsewhere.
Do they require your fingerprint to authenticate your filing?
The FISA court was designed only for conversations- communications surveillance where one party was and American citizen-US person. I'll grant that the administration did not follow the letter of the law the fact remains, they gave the phone company authorization, the phone companies acted and because of that, they get the affirmative defense that they were promise.
Again, the phone companies didn't get duped. They knew the government was spying on US citizens, and that they needed a warrant for that. Whatever they were promised, they knew what was going on.
Why do you think so many senators and congressmen came out in support for the telecom immunity by saying they already had it under different laws.
I don't know. I've seen congresspeople use all kinds of ridiculous reasons to support or oppose things. I don't rely on their reasoning because they have other interests and motivations.
Why do you think no one has gotten anywhere claiming the immunity law as ex post facto? I mean no one at all, who had a sound legal mind has attempting to make that claim to any court of law. The reason is because they know it isn't.
Because, in general, decriminalizing or lowering the severity of some act is not considered to be an ex post facto law. Only making something a crime or increasing the severity would be.
First of all, the law said that when an authorized agent handed them a document making the claim they had the authority, they were supposed to make the tap happen. Their teams of lawyers wouldn't have had a say in it at all if the government presented the authority.
That authority is a warrant from the FISA court. The whole reason it was established. They didn't have a warrant, so they didn't have the authority. At most they could have provided the taps during the grace period, but when no warrants were forthcoming, it should have ended.
You probably forgot the crazy political climate it was back in those days. Do what the government tells you to do or you are helping the terrorist. And if it was found out that a terrorist was using your services you are branded unamerican and isolate your largest customer group. If they found a terrorist then they would be hero's. This delusional collective state of mind stared to end around 2005 or so when the Iraq war wasn't showing any fruits for it labor.
And this makes it legal, how?
There is also the concept that the other side has better lawyers then you and to fight it will be fruitless.
They aren't afraid of government lawyers, especially when they can point to the law, while the government can only wave its hands around and try to imply that there should be a law to let them do what they want.
I think you fail to understand the difference. The Imunity wasn't a free pass to say this was a good action. It was saying the government cohorsed you into doing this illegal action, as the government put pressure to do an illegal deed (AKA. Intrapment) they shouldn't need to suffer the legal reprocussions from it.
First of all, please use a dictionary. Second, it's not like these corporations can be tricked into doing something illegal. They have packs of lawyers roaming their halls who have been dealing with FISA cases for decades. They know the law better than the government does most likely. They knew what they were doing wasn't legal. They did it anyway.
Your traffic analogy is very flawed. Nobody is harmed by traffic being directed the wrong way as long as it is controlled by someone. Happens all the time when there is construction. It's more like a cop asking you to do something that you know is illegal, such as shooting someone. You know it's illegal, no matter what the cop says, and once you've done it, you can't take it back. Why would you do it?
You may find this ironic, but I have asked all my Christian friends to challenge Obama if given the opportunity; since he claims to be a Christian, we are expected to call him out on his support of the murder of the unborn and even viable infants. He also supports the farming of clones for fetal tissue to support embryonic stem cell research.
Citations needed. I've read his positions and aside from some claims that were debunked, I don't see anything about him supporting these things.
There are thriving mod communities around many PC games. The mod community saved Oblivion on the PC from remaining the boring trudge-fest that it was upon release and still is on the 360 today. There are somewhere around 10K mods for Oblivion now. Everything from small tweaks to huge compilations that make expansive changes to the world and even add more areas to it. They've changed the game from top to bottom into what it could have been if Bethesda hadn't made every wrong decision possible. Now it's a fantastic game that I still play regularly today. Bet you don't see that happen on consoles anytime soon.
The PC landscape is certainly suffering due to consoles being the most accessible and profitable gaming devices. But PC gaming isn't going to go away. There will always be profit to be made and so some studios will always be around to make PC games. I don't remember who it was now, but one PC developer said that they're welcoming the idea of some of the other studios giving up on PC gaming. Means more sales for them if they keep building games that cater to the unique tastes of PC gamers.
Hey, "bad evidence" damns the jury more than anyone else. If used to be that only the dumbest elements of society couldn't get out of jury duty. At least where I live, it's damn hard to get out of it. So why not put the jury in jail, too? Those are the ones who are ultimately responsible for the conviction.
Actually it's easy to get out of it if you have two brain cells to rub together. If you have a shred of knowledge about the subject, computer-related in this case, one attorney or the other will probably eliminate you as a potential juror. And if you just don't want to be on the jury, it's quite easy to answer a few questions in a way that will get you tossed as well.
And shouldn't we, to use the same argument the left-wing kooks used to justify invading the privacy of Palin, "have the right to know"?
So you want to use the same argument as people you describe as "left-wing kooks"? I think you may have revealed more about yourself than you intended.
I think most of us here said that the kid that got into Palin's account was an idiot that deserved punishment. I don't know why anyone would want to argue against that in this case either.
You can just go read all the pro-invade Palin's email on the hopes she did something wrong crowd here at/. to reveal just how warped this place has become. The number who defended getting to the email of a mere candidate were astounding and was purely driving my political leaning.
Go to a left-leaning site and you'll find an astounding number of left-leaning idiots. Go to a right-leaning site and you'll find an astounding number of right-leaning idiots. The fact that you claim that this was purely driving your political leaning makes me suspect you're one of them as well.
You have a good point, note however you completely ignore one very important aspect of Palin's email break in.
Palin was breaking the law when she used that email box for official government business in an attempt to deliberately hide it. (She said so in one of the emails in the box.) The "kids photos" were a side effect of her getting busted by a vigilante out to get her for doing something illegal.
How exactly is that point important in a case dealing with a citizen illegally accessing her email account? Especially since it was completely unnecessary since there was already an investigation in progress and at least four boxes of evidence (all of the emails dealing with state business sent by two of her aides were addressed to her yahoo email address). Those were related to a different yahoo email account that she was using, but they would have found the other one through that anyway. Regardless of his intentions, the kid that did it was a moron that broke the law.
and yes, that is what the riaa is trying to do by using the word "pirate", and yes, they are wasting their time. so you want to be as hopeless and retarded as the riaa? the game the riaa is playing is stupid. you beat them by not playing their stupid game. stop trying to redefine words. they ebb and flow in meaning on their own, at the behest of popular culture, which no one controls. pure folly
Wasting their time? The mainstream media uses the term regularly now. I think they've completely succeeded in their goal of redefining the term. It may be folly to try to resist that, but I'm really not convinced of it. Pointing it out to the media that they're using a loaded term may not always accomplish anything, but I think it might in at least some cases. It shows bias, which is something that should be avoided.
words are complicated, their negative connotations dependent on the context. the pirates of centuries ago were of course just like the amoral murderous thugs trolling off the coast of somalia today, but over time, they've developed a romantic, robin hood type quality
True. I think that part of it may be the fact that they often preyed on other amoral murderous thugs that happened to be state-sponsored. Not really a lot different today when you consider the actions of the states and corporations behind the oil trade.
Regardless, there's something to be said for using language that doesn't carry so much baggage. The industry managed to make the pirate moniker stick, which is to their benefit. Doesn't mean we should just roll over and accept it. We have to either point out the biased and inflammatory nature of the term, or try to give it the same romantic notion that Johnny Depp benefits from. Not sure which would work better.
He does not deserve what he gets, and the type of bullying you're suggesting amounts to something quite worse than what the RIAA does to the people on the receiving end of their bullying.
Bullying? Are you serious? Like hauling people from another continent across the sea in horrible conditions and then forcing them to spend their entire lives serving you in return for the right to continue living to serve you, as well as any children of theirs being born into servitude isn't bullying?
You've got some kind of fucked up morality there. There's also the issue of the fact that there was a war going on. They took sides, took up arms, and took their chances. I can't feel sorry for them. Their children, sure. But not the slave-owners themselves.
Forcing him to comply with the law is one thing, basically killing him by destroying his ability to eat is as bad as it gets, it's tantamount to murder. In fact, they are basically murdering him and his whole family (children and all), as well as anyone else who depended on him.
I got the impression that there were a lot of manual labor jobs opening up in the south. I'm sure the survivors could get on as laborers somewhere else.
That's right, you heard me, the US government should have bought them and freed them.
Funny how your morality excuses the act of purchasing slaves in the first place, but you feel that releasing them without treating them as property is wrong. They were recognized as human beings rather than property. Buying them is a non-starter.
Since I'm agnostic, that other remark doesn't apply to me.
The people in the Jobs Bank have zero right to the profits the company produces; they sat it a room doing nothing for 8 hours a day for full pay. I have no problem with reducing executive compensation dramatically when a company performs poorly, but you need to also give management the power to reshape the workforce without massive payoffs and lengthy negotiations.
Then again, it comes down to negotiation. Both sides have to make concessions. Everyone keeps hammering on how the unions are hurting the company, while hardly anyone points at the executive pay and bonuses and asks what the hell they did to earn it. Both sides need to have power to negotiate, otherwise we go back to pre-union times where management can do as they please and workers work in miserable conditions for pitiful pay.
For me, it's weird and disturbing to think there's just this bunch of physical universes here for no reason. It almost feels more illogical that it would exist out of the blue than for there to be something that "made" it all.
That doesn't help either, because then the question becomes, "well if there is some creator of our universe, then who or what created the creator?" Something must have come before this, and something before that, and something before that, ad infinitum. I think it's just one of those questions that will remain unanswered. I don't think the answer really matters. We'll learn as much as we can about our universe because it helps us in practical ways and because we're just naturally curious.
The average UAW factory worker makes 70% more than the average US factory worker. The average GM hourly wage worker pays 7% of their healthcare costs, the average salaried worker in the US pays 30%. There are assembly line monkeys making $100,000 a year. The UAW has successfully sucked itself dry. I'm sorry, but we do not have children in factories or horrendous conditions anymore thanks to unions, but they do not have a purpose here anymore. Look at the industries that are heavily unionized, American automakers, American steel and construction. How are those doing right about now?
The UAW will have to make concessions. That much is given. But without unions, management just runs roughshod over the workers. This is a well-documented fact, and is why unions formed in the first place. There needs to be balance. Letting management pocket huge salaries and bonuses, even as they lay off the workforce or cut pay and benefits should not happen either, but it does.
You only get what you can successfully demand, and workers had to do something to give themselves the power to demand a fair share of the profits, else they are simply paid the bare minimum that management can get away with. So we have unions. The unions have to be careful not to make demands that will bankrupt the company, as they will lose out as well. But they have to be firm with the management, lest the workers go back to being marginalized while management reaps all of the profits. It's not easy, but I don't see a better solution.
Generally/. users don't understand why companies like this request these things. When you have IP you have to defend your IP, and if you do not defend it, then you are risk of loosing certain protections, or the IP all together. Toyota may not actually want to do this, but they have to, just to ensure that other legitiment infringments can be addressed as well.
Generally/. users don't understand that there is more than one type of IP, and they don't have the same rules. There is no risk of losing copyright on a work due to lack of enforcement. Trademarks do have that risk, but there are a lot of factors that must be considered when determining whether a work is actually violating someone's trademark.
Well, I didn't RTFA, but I read the summery and it says "in a blatant example of DMCA abuse".
It's interesting that the story would say one thing and the posting another. Yep, I checked, the story actually says both that they are claiming it's an abuse of the DMCA while the lawyers of the Toyota has also been cagey. These demands have not been sent in the form of a DMCA notice. It is possible that this has nothing to do with the DMCA and is actually a tradmark case of something similar.
It's abuse of the DMCA because they are being threatened with the DMCA, but Toyota isn't actually filing DMCA takedown requests, presumably because they don't actually own the copyrights to the images and are just trying to intimidate the site. That's the abuse, and it's definitely DMCA-based since that's the law that would be used to force a takedown.
You can buy American made, small, fuel efficient cars if you want to from the Big Three; a Focus gets like 40mpg. The financial situation is more due to ruinous union demands like the Jobs Bank.
Can't blame unions for wanting a decent cut of the profits. The execs certainly take more than their share. If workers don't fight for it, they don't get it. Yeah, they're gonna need to cut back some, but so does management, especially since their management hasn't been all that great. GM recently reversed the pay cuts that management took a couple years ago. Seems like a bad time to do that. Giving management a bump on the order of 30%+ doesn't seem warranted at this time, especially as they're trying to get unions to make even more concessions. When a company is foundering, management should take at least as much of hit as the workers. Lack of accountability is a big problem with executive pay. If they aren't taking a hit when the company does, there's a problem.
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But you have to use caution in what you say because "disgusting and unsanitary" are not permited to operate by most of the laws. So even when your value system places them lower, the state says it is X and you will most likely be bound by the state's standards seeing how they are written in law or with the effect of law.
The person said that they found it disgusting and unsanitary when they visited it. It's perfectly possible that the place was in violation of the law at that time, but has been in compliance since then. The person is referring to a single visit as far as I can tell, so I don't see how it could be proved to be defamatory.
But the statement, as cited in the article, could not be proven slanderous without a thorough audit of the sanitation at all the restaurants the speaker has visited. And the burden of proof is not on the defense.
Worse, the audit of the plaintiff's restaurant would have had to have taken place at the time of the defendant's visit, since that's what they are referring to. It could have been cleaned up since then. There's simply no way to prove defamation/slander here.
While putting forward a damages claim of a few dollars as might be representative of the actual ingringement might be more accurate, it would clearly not be any sort of deterrent. However, rather than putting up stupidly high sums of damages as the RIAA as currently chasing, might it not be a better "everybody wins" solution to make the ruling along the lines of $5 for damages plus ten hours community service as a punishment.
You do understand that we're talking about a few dollars per song, which would add up to a fair amount if the RIAA is correct that people are transferring huge amounts of music. It's still much more reasonable than the hundreds or thousands per song that they're trying to get now, which really does seem like extortion.
The problem they face then is that MediaDefender is not licensed to do the investigations, and they probably can't get licensed because their methods most likely wouldn't be legal. If we have to have this hugely complicated legal system, we might as well try to make it help out the little guys once in a while too.
The unjust law that says you can't take copies of their music without paying for it? Yeah, that's right up there with slavery, British oppression of India, and Jim Crow.
Civil disobedience will show those oppressive bastards. Give me Britney Spears for free, or give me death!
More like the unjust laws that grant a virtually perpetual monopoly over information, with less and less consideration of the public interest with each passing piece of legislation.
I've been told that in Michigan if you are not convicted you can file to have your fingerprints pulled from the database. I don't know how it works elsewhere.
Do they require your fingerprint to authenticate your filing?
The FISA court was designed only for conversations- communications surveillance where one party was and American citizen-US person. I'll grant that the administration did not follow the letter of the law the fact remains, they gave the phone company authorization, the phone companies acted and because of that, they get the affirmative defense that they were promise.
Again, the phone companies didn't get duped. They knew the government was spying on US citizens, and that they needed a warrant for that. Whatever they were promised, they knew what was going on.
Why do you think so many senators and congressmen came out in support for the telecom immunity by saying they already had it under different laws.
I don't know. I've seen congresspeople use all kinds of ridiculous reasons to support or oppose things. I don't rely on their reasoning because they have other interests and motivations.
Why do you think no one has gotten anywhere claiming the immunity law as ex post facto? I mean no one at all, who had a sound legal mind has attempting to make that claim to any court of law. The reason is because they know it isn't.
Because, in general, decriminalizing or lowering the severity of some act is not considered to be an ex post facto law. Only making something a crime or increasing the severity would be.
First of all, the law said that when an authorized agent handed them a document making the claim they had the authority, they were supposed to make the tap happen. Their teams of lawyers wouldn't have had a say in it at all if the government presented the authority.
That authority is a warrant from the FISA court. The whole reason it was established. They didn't have a warrant, so they didn't have the authority. At most they could have provided the taps during the grace period, but when no warrants were forthcoming, it should have ended.
You probably forgot the crazy political climate it was back in those days. Do what the government tells you to do or you are helping the terrorist. And if it was found out that a terrorist was using your services you are branded unamerican and isolate your largest customer group. If they found a terrorist then they would be hero's. This delusional collective state of mind stared to end around 2005 or so when the Iraq war wasn't showing any fruits for it labor.
And this makes it legal, how?
There is also the concept that the other side has better lawyers then you and to fight it will be fruitless.
They aren't afraid of government lawyers, especially when they can point to the law, while the government can only wave its hands around and try to imply that there should be a law to let them do what they want.
I think you fail to understand the difference. The Imunity wasn't a free pass to say this was a good action. It was saying the government cohorsed you into doing this illegal action, as the government put pressure to do an illegal deed (AKA. Intrapment) they shouldn't need to suffer the legal reprocussions from it.
First of all, please use a dictionary. Second, it's not like these corporations can be tricked into doing something illegal. They have packs of lawyers roaming their halls who have been dealing with FISA cases for decades. They know the law better than the government does most likely. They knew what they were doing wasn't legal. They did it anyway.
Your traffic analogy is very flawed. Nobody is harmed by traffic being directed the wrong way as long as it is controlled by someone. Happens all the time when there is construction. It's more like a cop asking you to do something that you know is illegal, such as shooting someone. You know it's illegal, no matter what the cop says, and once you've done it, you can't take it back. Why would you do it?
You may find this ironic, but I have asked all my Christian friends to challenge Obama if given the opportunity; since he claims to be a Christian, we are expected to call him out on his support of the murder of the unborn and even viable infants. He also supports the farming of clones for fetal tissue to support embryonic stem cell research.
Citations needed. I've read his positions and aside from some claims that were debunked, I don't see anything about him supporting these things.
There are thriving mod communities around many PC games. The mod community saved Oblivion on the PC from remaining the boring trudge-fest that it was upon release and still is on the 360 today. There are somewhere around 10K mods for Oblivion now. Everything from small tweaks to huge compilations that make expansive changes to the world and even add more areas to it. They've changed the game from top to bottom into what it could have been if Bethesda hadn't made every wrong decision possible. Now it's a fantastic game that I still play regularly today. Bet you don't see that happen on consoles anytime soon.
The PC landscape is certainly suffering due to consoles being the most accessible and profitable gaming devices. But PC gaming isn't going to go away. There will always be profit to be made and so some studios will always be around to make PC games. I don't remember who it was now, but one PC developer said that they're welcoming the idea of some of the other studios giving up on PC gaming. Means more sales for them if they keep building games that cater to the unique tastes of PC gamers.
Hey, "bad evidence" damns the jury more than anyone else. If used to be that only the dumbest elements of society couldn't get out of jury duty. At least where I live, it's damn hard to get out of it. So why not put the jury in jail, too? Those are the ones who are ultimately responsible for the conviction.
Actually it's easy to get out of it if you have two brain cells to rub together. If you have a shred of knowledge about the subject, computer-related in this case, one attorney or the other will probably eliminate you as a potential juror. And if you just don't want to be on the jury, it's quite easy to answer a few questions in a way that will get you tossed as well.
And shouldn't we, to use the same argument the left-wing kooks used to justify invading the privacy of Palin, "have the right to know"?
So you want to use the same argument as people you describe as "left-wing kooks"? I think you may have revealed more about yourself than you intended.
I think most of us here said that the kid that got into Palin's account was an idiot that deserved punishment. I don't know why anyone would want to argue against that in this case either.
You can just go read all the pro-invade Palin's email on the hopes she did something wrong crowd here at /. to reveal just how warped this place has become. The number who defended getting to the email of a mere candidate were astounding and was purely driving my political leaning.
Go to a left-leaning site and you'll find an astounding number of left-leaning idiots. Go to a right-leaning site and you'll find an astounding number of right-leaning idiots. The fact that you claim that this was purely driving your political leaning makes me suspect you're one of them as well.
You have a good point, note however you completely ignore one very important aspect of Palin's email break in.
Palin was breaking the law when she used that email box for official government business in an attempt to deliberately hide it. (She said so in one of the emails in the box.) The "kids photos" were a side effect of her getting busted by a vigilante out to get her for doing something illegal.
How exactly is that point important in a case dealing with a citizen illegally accessing her email account? Especially since it was completely unnecessary since there was already an investigation in progress and at least four boxes of evidence (all of the emails dealing with state business sent by two of her aides were addressed to her yahoo email address). Those were related to a different yahoo email account that she was using, but they would have found the other one through that anyway. Regardless of his intentions, the kid that did it was a moron that broke the law.
and yes, that is what the riaa is trying to do by using the word "pirate", and yes, they are wasting their time. so you want to be as hopeless and retarded as the riaa? the game the riaa is playing is stupid. you beat them by not playing their stupid game. stop trying to redefine words. they ebb and flow in meaning on their own, at the behest of popular culture, which no one controls. pure folly
Wasting their time? The mainstream media uses the term regularly now. I think they've completely succeeded in their goal of redefining the term. It may be folly to try to resist that, but I'm really not convinced of it. Pointing it out to the media that they're using a loaded term may not always accomplish anything, but I think it might in at least some cases. It shows bias, which is something that should be avoided.
words are complicated, their negative connotations dependent on the context. the pirates of centuries ago were of course just like the amoral murderous thugs trolling off the coast of somalia today, but over time, they've developed a romantic, robin hood type quality
True. I think that part of it may be the fact that they often preyed on other amoral murderous thugs that happened to be state-sponsored. Not really a lot different today when you consider the actions of the states and corporations behind the oil trade.
Regardless, there's something to be said for using language that doesn't carry so much baggage. The industry managed to make the pirate moniker stick, which is to their benefit. Doesn't mean we should just roll over and accept it. We have to either point out the biased and inflammatory nature of the term, or try to give it the same romantic notion that Johnny Depp benefits from. Not sure which would work better.
words evolve in meaning and use, and you need to get used to it
So just to make things clear, I think we need a new name for these guys I wouldn't want to soil their reputation by continuing to call them pirates.
He does not deserve what he gets, and the type of bullying you're suggesting amounts to something quite worse than what the RIAA does to the people on the receiving end of their bullying.
Bullying? Are you serious? Like hauling people from another continent across the sea in horrible conditions and then forcing them to spend their entire lives serving you in return for the right to continue living to serve you, as well as any children of theirs being born into servitude isn't bullying?
You've got some kind of fucked up morality there. There's also the issue of the fact that there was a war going on. They took sides, took up arms, and took their chances. I can't feel sorry for them. Their children, sure. But not the slave-owners themselves.
Forcing him to comply with the law is one thing, basically killing him by destroying his ability to eat is as bad as it gets, it's tantamount to murder. In fact, they are basically murdering him and his whole family (children and all), as well as anyone else who depended on him.
I got the impression that there were a lot of manual labor jobs opening up in the south. I'm sure the survivors could get on as laborers somewhere else.
That's right, you heard me, the US government should have bought them and freed them.
Funny how your morality excuses the act of purchasing slaves in the first place, but you feel that releasing them without treating them as property is wrong. They were recognized as human beings rather than property. Buying them is a non-starter.
Since I'm agnostic, that other remark doesn't apply to me.
The people in the Jobs Bank have zero right to the profits the company produces; they sat it a room doing nothing for 8 hours a day for full pay. I have no problem with reducing executive compensation dramatically when a company performs poorly, but you need to also give management the power to reshape the workforce without massive payoffs and lengthy negotiations.
Then again, it comes down to negotiation. Both sides have to make concessions. Everyone keeps hammering on how the unions are hurting the company, while hardly anyone points at the executive pay and bonuses and asks what the hell they did to earn it. Both sides need to have power to negotiate, otherwise we go back to pre-union times where management can do as they please and workers work in miserable conditions for pitiful pay.
For me, it's weird and disturbing to think there's just this bunch of physical universes here for no reason. It almost feels more illogical that it would exist out of the blue than for there to be something that "made" it all.
That doesn't help either, because then the question becomes, "well if there is some creator of our universe, then who or what created the creator?" Something must have come before this, and something before that, and something before that, ad infinitum. I think it's just one of those questions that will remain unanswered. I don't think the answer really matters. We'll learn as much as we can about our universe because it helps us in practical ways and because we're just naturally curious.
The average UAW factory worker makes 70% more than the average US factory worker. The average GM hourly wage worker pays 7% of their healthcare costs, the average salaried worker in the US pays 30%. There are assembly line monkeys making $100,000 a year. The UAW has successfully sucked itself dry. I'm sorry, but we do not have children in factories or horrendous conditions anymore thanks to unions, but they do not have a purpose here anymore. Look at the industries that are heavily unionized, American automakers, American steel and construction. How are those doing right about now?
The UAW will have to make concessions. That much is given. But without unions, management just runs roughshod over the workers. This is a well-documented fact, and is why unions formed in the first place. There needs to be balance. Letting management pocket huge salaries and bonuses, even as they lay off the workforce or cut pay and benefits should not happen either, but it does.
You only get what you can successfully demand, and workers had to do something to give themselves the power to demand a fair share of the profits, else they are simply paid the bare minimum that management can get away with. So we have unions. The unions have to be careful not to make demands that will bankrupt the company, as they will lose out as well. But they have to be firm with the management, lest the workers go back to being marginalized while management reaps all of the profits. It's not easy, but I don't see a better solution.
Generally /. users don't understand why companies like this request these things. When you have IP you have to defend your IP, and if you do not defend it, then you are risk of loosing certain protections, or the IP all together. Toyota may not actually want to do this, but they have to, just to ensure that other legitiment infringments can be addressed as well.
Generally /. users don't understand that there is more than one type of IP, and they don't have the same rules. There is no risk of losing copyright on a work due to lack of enforcement. Trademarks do have that risk, but there are a lot of factors that must be considered when determining whether a work is actually violating someone's trademark.
Well, I didn't RTFA, but I read the summery and it says "in a blatant example of DMCA abuse".
It's interesting that the story would say one thing and the posting another. Yep, I checked, the story actually says both that they are claiming it's an abuse of the DMCA while the lawyers of the Toyota has also been cagey. These demands have not been sent in the form of a DMCA notice. It is possible that this has nothing to do with the DMCA and is actually a tradmark case of something similar.
It's abuse of the DMCA because they are being threatened with the DMCA, but Toyota isn't actually filing DMCA takedown requests, presumably because they don't actually own the copyrights to the images and are just trying to intimidate the site. That's the abuse, and it's definitely DMCA-based since that's the law that would be used to force a takedown.
You can buy American made, small, fuel efficient cars if you want to from the Big Three; a Focus gets like 40mpg. The financial situation is more due to ruinous union demands like the Jobs Bank.
Can't blame unions for wanting a decent cut of the profits. The execs certainly take more than their share. If workers don't fight for it, they don't get it. Yeah, they're gonna need to cut back some, but so does management, especially since their management hasn't been all that great. GM recently reversed the pay cuts that management took a couple years ago. Seems like a bad time to do that. Giving management a bump on the order of 30%+ doesn't seem warranted at this time, especially as they're trying to get unions to make even more concessions. When a company is foundering, management should take at least as much of hit as the workers. Lack of accountability is a big problem with executive pay. If they aren't taking a hit when the company does, there's a problem.