Declaring the U.S. justice system fundamentally broken is not 'naive', nor does randomly pointing out the irrelevant fact that all justice systems involve "people" make it so. This is a perfect example of a belligerent, narrow-minded person willing to lash out in ignorance against others without thinking through what their position might be.
The U.S. legal system can be clearly demonstrated to be unworkable by simply studying its current foundation and operating principles. First off, the legal system involves a body of legal texts operating at multiple levels which are inaccessible to the public. The sheer scope and detail of the legal system precludes even large bodies of lawyers from comprehending it fully, requiring many to devote entire careers of research to deal with various legal cases and issues. If you don't believe this, find a lawyer who would ever recommend defending yourself before a court. From the host of local ordinances designed to give police excuses to stop and search people who are committing no actual crime to the tangled federal jurisdiction rules which allow the USSC to wash its hands of human rights violations across the nation while still allowing the Feds to wage war on people practicing legal activities under local state laws, the 'rules' are beyond the scope of the populace to understand sufficiently to challenge those working 'within' the legal system.
Add to this the fact that those designed to represent the citizenry. The people you need to hire to do things like defend you or interpret law for you, are now part of a purely private, purely profit oriented sector. This only helps convolute the legal system as these forces struggle to reinvent the law to further profit minded orientations. Neither the law nor the citizenry is the primary focus of their behavior, profit is. As a result, and as we've regularly seen, money defines court outcomes, not justice or even legal rational.
And as for juries, someone asked what the odds were of getting twelve idiots. They seem to forget a stage in most trials by jury called jury selection, in which both sides pick and choose their jury, working as hard as possible between them to find the twelve most gullible, least attentive people they can. Under circumstances like that, the odds are pretty damned good. And the lawyers better at picking juries that play to their strengths will, of course, be hired by the more powerful legal entities and be hired out to those who can pay the most for their services. Again, don't believe me? The refusal of so many to challenge the legal teams of large corps like Wal-Mart or Microsoft, while still being overeager to take on any case going after smaller local entities, no matter how frivolous, clearly illustrates this fact.
And we haven't even gotten into the rampant corruption riddling major police forces, the excessive powers of judges, the refusal of 'The Bar' to govern itself, blah blah blah blah. There's nothing naive about understanding these facts undermining the foundation of law in the U.S. There's only grotesque hostility and ignorance from people too stupid and self absorbed to even try and understand views they don't already agree with.
I notice that among these ten points are the ideas that p2p doesn't generate jobs or revenue or tax revenue, and yet this comes after claims that these services generate advertising dollars and money for terrorists. I might also remind people of Napster, which did all of these things before big media tried to shut them down.
I notice the occasional, rhetorical comment, "it's their right to charge whatever they want, if you don't like it don't pay it." This is, in fact, false. If you want to impose ethical standards upon others, you do not begin by stating that your own ethical position is, "I can can charge whatever outrageous, unjustifiable price I want and screw anyone who doesn't like it." If that's your ethical position, regardless of how 'legal' it is, then my ethical position is, "well, actually, I can just take it all from you for free, shrug," and this point of view is every bit as ethical. Laws drafted largely by business lobbies are not inherently right or ethical, and are not the end-all of any argument.
A case in point, one argument commonly used to support this brand of free market idiocy is that if someone wants to charge less, they can and we can then buy from them. This is crucial to the 'free market, what the market will bear', notion. And yet, when China recently tried to sell cheaper, but perfectly legal CDs in the US, the recording industry lobbied successfully to have the move made illegal under US trade law. In short, industries which happily exploit cheap labor in China have denied them the right to reap the rewards of that work from us, while also denying us the right to buy from a cheaper competitor.
Add this to the manner in which artists and consumers all are treated by the recording industry and your ethical obligation, I think, actually reverses. You are, be you an ethical, socially minded person, obligated to engage in civil disobedience at this point. The laws that big media hide behind no longer protect the artist or the consumer, but only the industy heads, at the expense of the two aformmentioned entities as well as any potential retail competition. So your obligation, now, is actually to pirate media, even if you don't want to.
The obviously dishonest and meaningless arguments in the list of ten are enough to show that an unscrupulous and greedy entity is ignoring every ethical social standard there is to directly attack the citizenry as regards their rights as people and consumers. It is ethically unforgivable to turn a blind eye to such behavior.
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Declaring the U.S. justice system fundamentally broken is not 'naive', nor does randomly pointing out the irrelevant fact that all justice systems involve "people" make it so. This is a perfect example of a belligerent, narrow-minded person willing to lash out in ignorance against others without thinking through what their position might be.
The U.S. legal system can be clearly demonstrated to be unworkable by simply studying its current foundation and operating principles. First off, the legal system involves a body of legal texts operating at multiple levels which are inaccessible to the public. The sheer scope and detail of the legal system precludes even large bodies of lawyers from comprehending it fully, requiring many to devote entire careers of research to deal with various legal cases and issues. If you don't believe this, find a lawyer who would ever recommend defending yourself before a court. From the host of local ordinances designed to give police excuses to stop and search people who are committing no actual crime to the tangled federal jurisdiction rules which allow the USSC to wash its hands of human rights violations across the nation while still allowing the Feds to wage war on people practicing legal activities under local state laws, the 'rules' are beyond the scope of the populace to understand sufficiently to challenge those working 'within' the legal system.
Add to this the fact that those designed to represent the citizenry. The people you need to hire to do things like defend you or interpret law for you, are now part of a purely private, purely profit oriented sector. This only helps convolute the legal system as these forces struggle to reinvent the law to further profit minded orientations. Neither the law nor the citizenry is the primary focus of their behavior, profit is. As a result, and as we've regularly seen, money defines court outcomes, not justice or even legal rational.
And as for juries, someone asked what the odds were of getting twelve idiots. They seem to forget a stage in most trials by jury called jury selection, in which both sides pick and choose their jury, working as hard as possible between them to find the twelve most gullible, least attentive people they can. Under circumstances like that, the odds are pretty damned good. And the lawyers better at picking juries that play to their strengths will, of course, be hired by the more powerful legal entities and be hired out to those who can pay the most for their services. Again, don't believe me? The refusal of so many to challenge the legal teams of large corps like Wal-Mart or Microsoft, while still being overeager to take on any case going after smaller local entities, no matter how frivolous, clearly illustrates this fact.
And we haven't even gotten into the rampant corruption riddling major police forces, the excessive powers of judges, the refusal of 'The Bar' to govern itself, blah blah blah blah. There's nothing naive about understanding these facts undermining the foundation of law in the U.S. There's only grotesque hostility and ignorance from people too stupid and self absorbed to even try and understand views they don't already agree with.
I notice that among these ten points are the ideas that p2p doesn't generate jobs or revenue or tax revenue, and yet this comes after claims that these services generate advertising dollars and money for terrorists. I might also remind people of Napster, which did all of these things before big media tried to shut them down. I notice the occasional, rhetorical comment, "it's their right to charge whatever they want, if you don't like it don't pay it." This is, in fact, false. If you want to impose ethical standards upon others, you do not begin by stating that your own ethical position is, "I can can charge whatever outrageous, unjustifiable price I want and screw anyone who doesn't like it." If that's your ethical position, regardless of how 'legal' it is, then my ethical position is, "well, actually, I can just take it all from you for free, shrug," and this point of view is every bit as ethical. Laws drafted largely by business lobbies are not inherently right or ethical, and are not the end-all of any argument. A case in point, one argument commonly used to support this brand of free market idiocy is that if someone wants to charge less, they can and we can then buy from them. This is crucial to the 'free market, what the market will bear', notion. And yet, when China recently tried to sell cheaper, but perfectly legal CDs in the US, the recording industry lobbied successfully to have the move made illegal under US trade law. In short, industries which happily exploit cheap labor in China have denied them the right to reap the rewards of that work from us, while also denying us the right to buy from a cheaper competitor. Add this to the manner in which artists and consumers all are treated by the recording industry and your ethical obligation, I think, actually reverses. You are, be you an ethical, socially minded person, obligated to engage in civil disobedience at this point. The laws that big media hide behind no longer protect the artist or the consumer, but only the industy heads, at the expense of the two aformmentioned entities as well as any potential retail competition. So your obligation, now, is actually to pirate media, even if you don't want to. The obviously dishonest and meaningless arguments in the list of ten are enough to show that an unscrupulous and greedy entity is ignoring every ethical social standard there is to directly attack the citizenry as regards their rights as people and consumers. It is ethically unforgivable to turn a blind eye to such behavior.