"your snide attitude is neither appreciate nor warranted"
If you find my attitude snide, you probably missed the joke. Either way, whether you consider my comment or its content welcome is of little concern to me; you don't get to choose who's in the discussion in a public forum.
"Before YOU go off on how that's not a real pony, I'll remind you how hard it is to download the experience of going to a concert and hearing music played live"
So what? The "concert experience" isn't what's copyrighted.
"And lastly, your dismissal of my idea brings absolutely no information to the table"
I told you exactly why I don't think it's workable. If you need a more detailed explanation, ask, but don't pretend that your failure to understand equates to some failure on my part to present the information.
IANAL, but after a little digging around I believe the answer is...
You can take the pictures (so long as the people are publically visible).
You can arrange them how you like and put them on a website.
Whether you can collect ad revenue would come down in part to whether doing so were deemed a commercial use of the pictures. I don't know if that's been clearly determined. While it's not as obvious as if you're selling prints, I'd call it a grey area and in truth I'd lean toward calling it commercial use. But what research I've done (whcih I'll grant isn't extensive) hasn't yielded an answer.
Even if the use is deemed commercial, you still might be ok, depending on the pictures. Everyone has the right to the commercial use of their own likeness, but they'd still have to show that their likeness created commercial value for your website. (Just because I'm in a picture, doesn't necessarily mean that the picture wouldn't be just as valuable without me; i.e. sometimes either my identity, or the presence of anyone at all, doens't matter to the picture's value.)
"imagine how hard selling that point will become once universal constructors are produced"
As long as we're dreaming, I'd like a pony.
"I seriously doubt (though it is possible) that you'd argue that food shouldn't be copied"
There's a huge difference between "food" and "music". If I had this magical make-anything device that you think will eventually exist, then using it to "copy" food would produce new food. Copying music only produces copies of old music. With music -- unlike with food -- there is a distinct, creative step of creating a new original.
In short, when you buy a hamburger you're not helping pay for the design of the cow. If and when society changes the mechanism for compensating creative work -- which technology may force it to do -- then the moral implication of copying music will change. Until then, copyright is the compensation mechanism, and flawed though it be, it is indeed immoral to circumvent it.
And before you start in about how the artist never sees the money -- It is true that the big label contracts also lack moral sense. Two wrongs don't make a right.
Oh, and by the way: rather than assume that it's absurd to think of not copying food, you should be aware that right or wrong, companies like Monsanto do claim IP rights over food.
"content producers putting their works in escrow "
It is an interesting idea, but it separates risk, reward, and control in a way that is probably not workable.
They risk astronaut's lives every time they run a mission. In fact I wonder which is more dangerous on a per capita basis -- being a soldier vs. being an astronaut...
It's not that they won't take any risk. It's that some people are discussing whether the risk has been elevated too far above the normal.
WFH has to do with copyright. So a few problems with your claim:
1) A password isn't something you can copyright, so neither the employee nor the employer "own" the copyright on the password.
2) Let's suppose I possess a copy of a work to which you hold the copyright. (i.e. Let's ignore the first point.) Copyright restrains me from doing certain things -- such as making copies of that work -- without your permission. It does not compell me to hand my copy over to you on demand, or to disclose the information therein to you if you somehow don't have said information. Ownership of the copyright isn't the same as ownership of a copy, nor is it "ownership of the information" as some people would claim. In short, if Scot Adams calls me up and demands I hand over any Dilbert comics I might have, I don't have to comply.
Now there may be laws governing access to an employer's systems that would compell you to reveal passwords; I really don't know. I don't know at the federal level, and I sure as hell don't know what state or local laws might apply. But WFH? I think not.
Please use "IANAL" or "I am not an attorney" when dispensing bogus legal advice, thanks.
On the one hand, I think this is a pretty useless "feature", likely to cause more trouble than it solves. (By that I mean, I think it's likely to cause quite a bit of trouble when it mis-interprets what I want it to do, and I don't think it solves anything at all.)
But on the other hand, I see several of these "what if I want to do X or Y with it?" questions... and to me the answer is pretty obvious: If you want to do X or Y, this isn't the gadget you should use to do it. That isn't what this thing does. Not every invention has to be useful for every application.
US law has similar restrictions on contract validity -- I beileve the term is "contract of adhesion".
But, US courts are, IMHO, often willing to reason backward to get the result they think "reasonable". The idea that shrink-wrap EULA are binding is so commonly asserted - correctly or not - in retail software sales that a court might well feel that it needs to find a justification for this, lest it upend the entire retail software market. If it were me, I personally would cheerfully say "well, you shouldn't have been relying on that mechanism to get what you want, and I'm not going to sign off on it just because you've done it for so long"; but would a court? I don't know.
In short, I know what I think of EULA, but I have no idea what their legal standing would be if fully tested. Nothing would surprise me.
No, but since that's the conclusion you jump to I have to ask: are you anti-semitic or something?
"Eye for an eye?"
And where exactly did I say that?
"There are certain standards that a person must meet to be a person, and not a dangerous wild animal in our midst"
The Constitution is specifically designed to protect the rights of criminals. Our system of government is based on the premise that they are, in fact, human no matter how strongly you disagree with their actions. They do have basic human rights, and those rights can only be limited in accordance with due process of law -- which includes the premise that the punishment must fit the crime.
"Card counting isn't cheating [...] The reason they kick you out for doing it simply because it's against the casino's rules"
And who, if not the casino, do you think defines the game? If you violate the rules of the person who defines the game, you are cheating. If you don't like the rules, play someone else's game. If nobody offers the game you want to play... tough.
Counting cards isn't illegal, but doing it in a casino that doesn't allow it is cheating. (And no casino I've ever heard of allows it.)
"And it's against their rules because, well, it's a smart strategy that can increase your chances of winning"
Except other things that increase your odds of winnnig -- like playing the basic strategy -- are not against their rules. In fact, most dealers will tell you what the book says to do on any given hadn if you ask.
The problem with counting isn't that it increases your odds of winning; it's that (if done correctly) it makes it so that on average the player is expected to win. Nobody is going to offer a game called "come in and I will give you money".
Can't say I've ever heard of that, unless you consider counting cards to be part of optimal play. Maybe you know more about the history than I do. I do know that every variation in use today is in the casino's favor unless you can count cards. Some variations are more favorable to the casino than others, and some gamblers will boycott any but the most player-friendly games, but the house always keeps the edge.
Now, don't get me wrong -- like I said you may know older history than I do, and I do intend to go get better informed... but I have to say at face value the idea that casinos would have a game where the player had the edge and count on non-optimal play sounds doubtful to me. The problem is, optimal blackjack (excluding card-counting) isn't "hard" -- it just requires that you memorize a table. Not everyone does it today, but then again today it's not the difference between an expensive hobby and a cash cow. If playing optimal blackjack in a disciplined manner (i.e. not just playing until you hit a losing streak) were profitable, I find it very hard to believe that few enough people would train themselves to do it as to allow their gains to be offset by those who don't.
So, because you fear that a judge might corruptly impose a death penalty some day, we should treat these judges as proxies for your hypothetical judge and punish them more severely than their actual crimes merit?
Of cousre, these judges wouldn't be handling death penalty cases. (Not to mention death sentences are generally handed out by a jury, not a judge.) And although they've shown the moral flexibility to either convince themselves that imprisoning these kids was ok, or to not care if it was ok, that's not enough to infer that they would send a person to death.
A person is not the system of which he is a part. I agree with those who think a judge should be held to a high standard -- that he or she accepts greater responsibility in exchange for his or her authority. However, a judge is still a human with basic rights. The punishment has to fit the crime actually committed (not the worst-case scenario that we can somehow call similar), and while this crime was severe, it does not warrant a death sentence.
TFA only says that the sentencing was corrupt. I've never seen a criminal record (certainly not a juvenile record); does it actually reflect the exact sentence, or just the conviction?
The question isn't really whether the casinos need sympathy.
The question is, realistically what would happen if casinos actually allowed the odds of any game to be tilted in the players' favor?
Answer: People would flock to that game, the casinos would lose money, and there would be no more casinos. Some people think that would be a good thing; are you surprised that the casino operators are not among them?
Of course, counting cards in your head is legal. For this reason, casinos will always have to do their own work to detect card-counters and enforce their own rules against them (by throwing them out and banning them from returning). They have a perfectly good way to detect card counters -- they have their own people counting the cards and watching betting patterns. So in my view the law against card-counting devices is not strictly necessary, though perhaps it encourages more people to play nice (as it puts actual legal consequences on those who can't keep track in their heads).
Of course, I see a lot of games played from a never-ending shoe; good luck counting in that environment.
First of all, the judicial branch is defined in Article III, not Article II.
So let's look at Article III:
Section 1 states that the courts wield judicial power, but it does not state how that power is to be divided amongst them. In particular, it does not say that an inferior court must wield the full judicial authority; only that such a court, created by Congress, is an instrument to which some judicial authority can be given.
Section 2 establishes the total scope of judicial power, and reserves the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. It puts a couple requirements on how criminal trials will work (e.g. jury). But, It does not further restrict Congress as to how much judicial authority they give an inferior court they create.
Section 3 limits the definition of treason...
And then we're off to Article IV, talking about the relationship among states under the Union.
Now I'm not Constitutional scholar, so if perhaps there's a definition of "inferior court" elsewhere in the document that would support your claim, please do provide a citation.
The broken window argument says that the economy as a whole doesn't benefit from the breaking of a window, because the visible increase in activity (paying the glazier) is offset by an unnoticed loss of activity somewhere else (on the assumption that the homeowner's resources were 100% utilized).
It does not say that the glazier fails to benefit. If there were a social benefit to driving resources toward glaziers, but the political will to make it happen wasn't there absent a crisis, then society would indeed benefit from broken windows even though the benefit wouldn't be in the form of an overall increase in economic activity.
Some people do argue that an increased investment in space-related technology would benefit society even if it means taking resources away from some other endeavor, and that seems to be GP's argument. I'm not saying one way or the other whether that argument holds up here; but if it doesn't, the reason isn't the broken window fallacy.
As a starting point, a music festival != a school in the eyes of copyright law. But I'm not going to argue the copyright implications. See, had I sued, the suit wouldn't have been a copyright suit. It would have been an ADA suit, and the district would've found itself in a tough spot between the two bodies of law.
The likely result would have been, the district would have to provide the enlarged copies, and it would be up to the district to find a legal way to do so. If anyone had to deal with the publisher, it would've been them, not me.
IANAL, but FWIW the main thing I'd say to most of your questions is: defamation (including libel or slander) generally means asserting as fact something that is both untrue and harmful to reputation. That's part of the point of defamation laws; presenting harmful speculation as fact is intended to be actionable.
Artistic representation... well, consider this. Some TV shows -- for example, crime dramas -- start out with a disclaimer that the events and people are fictional. They never use real people's names even when stories are "Ripped From the Headlines". And on top of that, they make a point of changing relevant facts. Why? Because somebody is going to conect the dots, and in the worst case they might just have to convince a judge or jury that they weren't making factual claims about any real person.
If you want to state your opinion, make it clear that you're stating your opinion. I'm not sure where the lines are drawn if you make a statement of fact but stick "in my opinion" in front of it; for example, "in my opinion Mr. Smith has HIV" probably needs some pretty specific context to be an honest statement of opinion rather than a veiled statement of fact, and I have no idea whether it would be protected or not. But if something really is a matter of opinion and you state it as your opinion ("I think Mr. Smith is a jerk"), then you should be in the clear as I understand the law...
If you want to discuss hypotheticals, I should think you'd just make it clear you're discussing hypotheticals (i.e. there's a difference between saying "what would the implications be if we found that Mr. Smith had HIV" vs. saying "Mr. Smith has HIV; how does that affect the situation")>
"The only real primary authoratative source for a person's name would be a birth certificate or passport, neither of which are public documents. Beyond that, you have their word, and the word of people who should be in the know. Newspapers who cover that beat should be in the know"
I agree with the gist of your post, but not with this first paragraph.
Yes, the information standards applied to a wikipedia article need to be in tune with the nature of the information in that article. Relying on a newspaper is risky, though -- they are often second-hand or even third-hand sources, and their quick publication cycles lead to relatively high typo counts (not to mention factual error counts) that might be corrected in a later issue's retraction but will never be revised to correctness in the original article.
Add to that, this "fact" was known to be in dispute -- so the standards for verifying it should've been higher than normal.
If you need the name of a public official, there are public sources for that name. If you need my name, you might have a harder time, but that's a moot point.
Mixed results. I snuck around behind his back to get the copies I needed, with the support of the orchestra director and the principal. The district did order him to make the copies and initiated disciplinary action when he refused, but I don't think it ever led to anything. It was my senior year when he decided to pull this stunt, so I wasn't around long enough to see things through to know the final conclusion.
But, how will we devise a legally-precise definition of a "single purpose", so that we can identify what is or isn't a rider? Sure, some cases are obvious -- moreso because today there's no incentive to make them non-obvious -- but others are not.
Is an "energy bill" a single purpose, or do I need one bill for light bulb efficeincy standards, another for fuel efficiency in cars, etc. ad nausium? Is a tax break for green construction a rider or a legitimate part of the bill? What about a subsidy for R&D at a waste management company whose processes might be used for biofuel one day?
Who defines the "purpose" of a bill? In the state of MO, when you form a business, you have to state a purpose -- and so everyone covers their rear by adding "...and to conduct such other legal business as may come before us" (or something to that effect) to their statement of purpose, allowing themselves to do any legitimate business that comes their way. Why wouldn't legislators do the same for their bills? They might have to be a little more subtle, but I'm pretty sure they'll find ways to state their purpose so broadly as to allow for riders...
We could use an "I know it when I see it" definition and hope it filters out the most eggregious cases; but with that lack of precision we would invite false positives. Worse, who makes the judgement as to whether something is a rider if the definition is subjective? The legislature as a whole? That would be the end of any chance for the minority party to advance its constituents' interests and would meanwhile leave the majority party free to slip in whatever riders they want. It might also create a new way for procedure to be abused to stall legitimate debate.
Lacking precise definitions of "single purpose" and "rider", I don't think this otherwise-good idea can be practically pursued.
Ok... except the text-to-speech feature on an ebook reader, regardless of any other purposes it might sometimes serve, is also an accessability feature for the blind, just like the screen reader on a PC used for web pages. GP is dead on.
When I was in high school, the director of our AV department waged a protracted battle with me over my making enlarged copies of sheet music in the orchestra. Never mind that this was a matter of vision accessability. Never mind that the school had allocated me a legitimately-purchased original, just as they did for each other student. Never mind that academic fair use would have been squarely in play even if the above hadn't been true, and certainly never mind that the law specifically forbade the reasoning behind his theory as to why fair use shouldn't apply.
I probably should've sued the district, but that's not how I roll.
My point, though, is this: There are indeed a subset of the population that believe content authors should have the right to profit from the fact that some customers have differing needs in how they can view said content. "You can't buy the regular edition and adapt it to your needs; you have to buy the special high-priced usable-by-you edition (if we bother to make one)".
And yet, the law as it stands, under the interpretation and rulings that are in effect regarding MS in the European market, does call for action to be taken.
It's not about whether competition is "possible". It's about whether two criteria are met:
(1) Does MS have a monopoly position in some market? (Answer: the US and EU both believe MS has a monopoly in the OS market. I disagere with some of the reasoning, but that is the current position of the courts.)
(2) If MS has a monopoly position in some market, are they leveraging it to gain a competitive advantage in another market? (Answer: Bundling the web browser with the OS meets that definition.)
The law doesn't say "you can use a monopoly position in one market to gain advantage in another as long as you don't get 100% market share in the second market", just as the law doesn't say "you can hit people you don't like in the head as long as they don't die". Moreover, the law isn't about protecting Opera, or Firefox, or any other software company; its purpose is to protect consumers by ensuring they get to make an informed choice about the products they buy -- i.e. keeping competition on a level playing field.
Now if you want to argue that the anti-monopoly laws and/or the rulings under which they're applied are flawed, I'd agree; but to blame Opera for expecting the courts to follow through on enforcing the rulings they've made doesn't make any sense at all.
Slashdot Mirror
"Your analogy is flawed"
I didn't offer an analogy. I refuted yours.
"your snide attitude is neither appreciate nor warranted"
If you find my attitude snide, you probably missed the joke. Either way, whether you consider my comment or its content welcome is of little concern to me; you don't get to choose who's in the discussion in a public forum.
"Before YOU go off on how that's not a real pony, I'll remind you how hard it is to download the experience of going to a concert and hearing music played live"
So what? The "concert experience" isn't what's copyrighted.
"And lastly, your dismissal of my idea brings absolutely no information to the table"
I told you exactly why I don't think it's workable. If you need a more detailed explanation, ask, but don't pretend that your failure to understand equates to some failure on my part to present the information.
IANAL, but after a little digging around I believe the answer is...
You can take the pictures (so long as the people are publically visible).
You can arrange them how you like and put them on a website.
Whether you can collect ad revenue would come down in part to whether doing so were deemed a commercial use of the pictures. I don't know if that's been clearly determined. While it's not as obvious as if you're selling prints, I'd call it a grey area and in truth I'd lean toward calling it commercial use. But what research I've done (whcih I'll grant isn't extensive) hasn't yielded an answer.
Even if the use is deemed commercial, you still might be ok, depending on the pictures. Everyone has the right to the commercial use of their own likeness, but they'd still have to show that their likeness created commercial value for your website. (Just because I'm in a picture, doesn't necessarily mean that the picture wouldn't be just as valuable without me; i.e. sometimes either my identity, or the presence of anyone at all, doens't matter to the picture's value.)
"imagine how hard selling that point will become once universal constructors are produced"
As long as we're dreaming, I'd like a pony.
"I seriously doubt (though it is possible) that you'd argue that food shouldn't be copied"
There's a huge difference between "food" and "music". If I had this magical make-anything device that you think will eventually exist, then using it to "copy" food would produce new food. Copying music only produces copies of old music. With music -- unlike with food -- there is a distinct, creative step of creating a new original.
In short, when you buy a hamburger you're not helping pay for the design of the cow. If and when society changes the mechanism for compensating creative work -- which technology may force it to do -- then the moral implication of copying music will change. Until then, copyright is the compensation mechanism, and flawed though it be, it is indeed immoral to circumvent it.
And before you start in about how the artist never sees the money -- It is true that the big label contracts also lack moral sense. Two wrongs don't make a right.
Oh, and by the way: rather than assume that it's absurd to think of not copying food, you should be aware that right or wrong, companies like Monsanto do claim IP rights over food.
"content producers putting their works in escrow "
It is an interesting idea, but it separates risk, reward, and control in a way that is probably not workable.
They risk astronaut's lives every time they run a mission. In fact I wonder which is more dangerous on a per capita basis -- being a soldier vs. being an astronaut...
It's not that they won't take any risk. It's that some people are discussing whether the risk has been elevated too far above the normal.
Yes, that's a reason why you would sometimes use precise but inaccurate data with good historical consistency.
Yes, we've established that the old data has historical consistency in spite of being inaccurate.
But:
1) When you're using techniques that show trend but not absolute value, you don't report absolute value. (If you're being honest.)
2) Can you substantiate that the old data, in spite of being inaccurate, is precise?
WFH has to do with copyright. So a few problems with your claim:
1) A password isn't something you can copyright, so neither the employee nor the employer "own" the copyright on the password.
2) Let's suppose I possess a copy of a work to which you hold the copyright. (i.e. Let's ignore the first point.) Copyright restrains me from doing certain things -- such as making copies of that work -- without your permission. It does not compell me to hand my copy over to you on demand, or to disclose the information therein to you if you somehow don't have said information. Ownership of the copyright isn't the same as ownership of a copy, nor is it "ownership of the information" as some people would claim. In short, if Scot Adams calls me up and demands I hand over any Dilbert comics I might have, I don't have to comply.
Now there may be laws governing access to an employer's systems that would compell you to reveal passwords; I really don't know. I don't know at the federal level, and I sure as hell don't know what state or local laws might apply. But WFH? I think not.
Please use "IANAL" or "I am not an attorney" when dispensing bogus legal advice, thanks.
On the one hand, I think this is a pretty useless "feature", likely to cause more trouble than it solves. (By that I mean, I think it's likely to cause quite a bit of trouble when it mis-interprets what I want it to do, and I don't think it solves anything at all.)
But on the other hand, I see several of these "what if I want to do X or Y with it?" questions... and to me the answer is pretty obvious: If you want to do X or Y, this isn't the gadget you should use to do it. That isn't what this thing does. Not every invention has to be useful for every application.
US law has similar restrictions on contract validity -- I beileve the term is "contract of adhesion".
But, US courts are, IMHO, often willing to reason backward to get the result they think "reasonable". The idea that shrink-wrap EULA are binding is so commonly asserted - correctly or not - in retail software sales that a court might well feel that it needs to find a justification for this, lest it upend the entire retail software market. If it were me, I personally would cheerfully say "well, you shouldn't have been relying on that mechanism to get what you want, and I'm not going to sign off on it just because you've done it for so long"; but would a court? I don't know.
In short, I know what I think of EULA, but I have no idea what their legal standing would be if fully tested. Nothing would surprise me.
"Are you Jewish or something?"
No, but since that's the conclusion you jump to I have to ask: are you anti-semitic or something?
"Eye for an eye?"
And where exactly did I say that?
"There are certain standards that a person must meet to be a person, and not a dangerous wild animal in our midst"
The Constitution is specifically designed to protect the rights of criminals. Our system of government is based on the premise that they are, in fact, human no matter how strongly you disagree with their actions. They do have basic human rights, and those rights can only be limited in accordance with due process of law -- which includes the premise that the punishment must fit the crime.
"Card counting isn't cheating [...]
The reason they kick you out for doing it simply because it's against the casino's rules"
And who, if not the casino, do you think defines the game? If you violate the rules of the person who defines the game, you are cheating. If you don't like the rules, play someone else's game. If nobody offers the game you want to play... tough.
Counting cards isn't illegal, but doing it in a casino that doesn't allow it is cheating. (And no casino I've ever heard of allows it.)
"And it's against their rules because, well, it's a smart strategy that can increase your chances of winning"
Except other things that increase your odds of winnnig -- like playing the basic strategy -- are not against their rules. In fact, most dealers will tell you what the book says to do on any given hadn if you ask.
The problem with counting isn't that it increases your odds of winning; it's that (if done correctly) it makes it so that on average the player is expected to win. Nobody is going to offer a game called "come in and I will give you money".
Can't say I've ever heard of that, unless you consider counting cards to be part of optimal play. Maybe you know more about the history than I do. I do know that every variation in use today is in the casino's favor unless you can count cards. Some variations are more favorable to the casino than others, and some gamblers will boycott any but the most player-friendly games, but the house always keeps the edge.
Now, don't get me wrong -- like I said you may know older history than I do, and I do intend to go get better informed... but I have to say at face value the idea that casinos would have a game where the player had the edge and count on non-optimal play sounds doubtful to me. The problem is, optimal blackjack (excluding card-counting) isn't "hard" -- it just requires that you memorize a table. Not everyone does it today, but then again today it's not the difference between an expensive hobby and a cash cow. If playing optimal blackjack in a disciplined manner (i.e. not just playing until you hit a losing streak) were profitable, I find it very hard to believe that few enough people would train themselves to do it as to allow their gains to be offset by those who don't.
So, because you fear that a judge might corruptly impose a death penalty some day, we should treat these judges as proxies for your hypothetical judge and punish them more severely than their actual crimes merit?
Of cousre, these judges wouldn't be handling death penalty cases. (Not to mention death sentences are generally handed out by a jury, not a judge.) And although they've shown the moral flexibility to either convince themselves that imprisoning these kids was ok, or to not care if it was ok, that's not enough to infer that they would send a person to death.
A person is not the system of which he is a part. I agree with those who think a judge should be held to a high standard -- that he or she accepts greater responsibility in exchange for his or her authority. However, a judge is still a human with basic rights. The punishment has to fit the crime actually committed (not the worst-case scenario that we can somehow call similar), and while this crime was severe, it does not warrant a death sentence.
TFA only says that the sentencing was corrupt. I've never seen a criminal record (certainly not a juvenile record); does it actually reflect the exact sentence, or just the conviction?
The question isn't really whether the casinos need sympathy.
The question is, realistically what would happen if casinos actually allowed the odds of any game to be tilted in the players' favor?
Answer: People would flock to that game, the casinos would lose money, and there would be no more casinos. Some people think that would be a good thing; are you surprised that the casino operators are not among them?
Of course, counting cards in your head is legal. For this reason, casinos will always have to do their own work to detect card-counters and enforce their own rules against them (by throwing them out and banning them from returning). They have a perfectly good way to detect card counters -- they have their own people counting the cards and watching betting patterns. So in my view the law against card-counting devices is not strictly necessary, though perhaps it encourages more people to play nice (as it puts actual legal consequences on those who can't keep track in their heads).
Of course, I see a lot of games played from a never-ending shoe; good luck counting in that environment.
First of all, the judicial branch is defined in Article III, not Article II.
So let's look at Article III:
Section 1 states that the courts wield judicial power, but it does not state how that power is to be divided amongst them. In particular, it does not say that an inferior court must wield the full judicial authority; only that such a court, created by Congress, is an instrument to which some judicial authority can be given.
Section 2 establishes the total scope of judicial power, and reserves the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. It puts a couple requirements on how criminal trials will work (e.g. jury). But, It does not further restrict Congress as to how much judicial authority they give an inferior court they create.
Section 3 limits the definition of treason...
And then we're off to Article IV, talking about the relationship among states under the Union.
Now I'm not Constitutional scholar, so if perhaps there's a definition of "inferior court" elsewhere in the document that would support your claim, please do provide a citation.
"Autism is horrible, so is your kid dying of meals, mumps, chicken pox, etc." Yeah, meals especially... I mean what the heck are you feeding them?
Well, yes and no.
The broken window argument says that the economy as a whole doesn't benefit from the breaking of a window, because the visible increase in activity (paying the glazier) is offset by an unnoticed loss of activity somewhere else (on the assumption that the homeowner's resources were 100% utilized).
It does not say that the glazier fails to benefit. If there were a social benefit to driving resources toward glaziers, but the political will to make it happen wasn't there absent a crisis, then society would indeed benefit from broken windows even though the benefit wouldn't be in the form of an overall increase in economic activity.
Some people do argue that an increased investment in space-related technology would benefit society even if it means taking resources away from some other endeavor, and that seems to be GP's argument. I'm not saying one way or the other whether that argument holds up here; but if it doesn't, the reason isn't the broken window fallacy.
As a starting point, a music festival != a school in the eyes of copyright law. But I'm not going to argue the copyright implications. See, had I sued, the suit wouldn't have been a copyright suit. It would have been an ADA suit, and the district would've found itself in a tough spot between the two bodies of law.
The likely result would have been, the district would have to provide the enlarged copies, and it would be up to the district to find a legal way to do so. If anyone had to deal with the publisher, it would've been them, not me.
IANAL, but FWIW the main thing I'd say to most of your questions is: defamation (including libel or slander) generally means asserting as fact something that is both untrue and harmful to reputation. That's part of the point of defamation laws; presenting harmful speculation as fact is intended to be actionable.
Artistic representation... well, consider this. Some TV shows -- for example, crime dramas -- start out with a disclaimer that the events and people are fictional. They never use real people's names even when stories are "Ripped From the Headlines". And on top of that, they make a point of changing relevant facts. Why? Because somebody is going to conect the dots, and in the worst case they might just have to convince a judge or jury that they weren't making factual claims about any real person.
If you want to state your opinion, make it clear that you're stating your opinion. I'm not sure where the lines are drawn if you make a statement of fact but stick "in my opinion" in front of it; for example, "in my opinion Mr. Smith has HIV" probably needs some pretty specific context to be an honest statement of opinion rather than a veiled statement of fact, and I have no idea whether it would be protected or not. But if something really is a matter of opinion and you state it as your opinion ("I think Mr. Smith is a jerk"), then you should be in the clear as I understand the law...
If you want to discuss hypotheticals, I should think you'd just make it clear you're discussing hypotheticals (i.e. there's a difference between saying "what would the implications be if we found that Mr. Smith had HIV" vs. saying "Mr. Smith has HIV; how does that affect the situation")>
"The only real primary authoratative source for a person's name would be a birth certificate or passport, neither of which are public documents. Beyond that, you have their word, and the word of people who should be in the know. Newspapers who cover that beat should be in the know"
I agree with the gist of your post, but not with this first paragraph.
Yes, the information standards applied to a wikipedia article need to be in tune with the nature of the information in that article. Relying on a newspaper is risky, though -- they are often second-hand or even third-hand sources, and their quick publication cycles lead to relatively high typo counts (not to mention factual error counts) that might be corrected in a later issue's retraction but will never be revised to correctness in the original article.
Add to that, this "fact" was known to be in dispute -- so the standards for verifying it should've been higher than normal.
If you need the name of a public official, there are public sources for that name. If you need my name, you might have a harder time, but that's a moot point.
Mixed results. I snuck around behind his back to get the copies I needed, with the support of the orchestra director and the principal. The district did order him to make the copies and initiated disciplinary action when he refused, but I don't think it ever led to anything. It was my senior year when he decided to pull this stunt, so I wasn't around long enough to see things through to know the final conclusion.
Sounds good on paper.
But, how will we devise a legally-precise definition of a "single purpose", so that we can identify what is or isn't a rider? Sure, some cases are obvious -- moreso because today there's no incentive to make them non-obvious -- but others are not.
Is an "energy bill" a single purpose, or do I need one bill for light bulb efficeincy standards, another for fuel efficiency in cars, etc. ad nausium? Is a tax break for green construction a rider or a legitimate part of the bill? What about a subsidy for R&D at a waste management company whose processes might be used for biofuel one day?
Who defines the "purpose" of a bill? In the state of MO, when you form a business, you have to state a purpose -- and so everyone covers their rear by adding "...and to conduct such other legal business as may come before us" (or something to that effect) to their statement of purpose, allowing themselves to do any legitimate business that comes their way. Why wouldn't legislators do the same for their bills? They might have to be a little more subtle, but I'm pretty sure they'll find ways to state their purpose so broadly as to allow for riders...
We could use an "I know it when I see it" definition and hope it filters out the most eggregious cases; but with that lack of precision we would invite false positives. Worse, who makes the judgement as to whether something is a rider if the definition is subjective? The legislature as a whole? That would be the end of any chance for the minority party to advance its constituents' interests and would meanwhile leave the majority party free to slip in whatever riders they want. It might also create a new way for procedure to be abused to stall legitimate debate.
Lacking precise definitions of "single purpose" and "rider", I don't think this otherwise-good idea can be practically pursued.
Ok... except the text-to-speech feature on an ebook reader, regardless of any other purposes it might sometimes serve, is also an accessability feature for the blind, just like the screen reader on a PC used for web pages. GP is dead on.
When I was in high school, the director of our AV department waged a protracted battle with me over my making enlarged copies of sheet music in the orchestra. Never mind that this was a matter of vision accessability. Never mind that the school had allocated me a legitimately-purchased original, just as they did for each other student. Never mind that academic fair use would have been squarely in play even if the above hadn't been true, and certainly never mind that the law specifically forbade the reasoning behind his theory as to why fair use shouldn't apply.
I probably should've sued the district, but that's not how I roll.
My point, though, is this: There are indeed a subset of the population that believe content authors should have the right to profit from the fact that some customers have differing needs in how they can view said content. "You can't buy the regular edition and adapt it to your needs; you have to buy the special high-priced usable-by-you edition (if we bother to make one)".
And yet, the law as it stands, under the interpretation and rulings that are in effect regarding MS in the European market, does call for action to be taken.
It's not about whether competition is "possible". It's about whether two criteria are met:
(1) Does MS have a monopoly position in some market? (Answer: the US and EU both believe MS has a monopoly in the OS market. I disagere with some of the reasoning, but that is the current position of the courts.)
(2) If MS has a monopoly position in some market, are they leveraging it to gain a competitive advantage in another market? (Answer: Bundling the web browser with the OS meets that definition.)
The law doesn't say "you can use a monopoly position in one market to gain advantage in another as long as you don't get 100% market share in the second market", just as the law doesn't say "you can hit people you don't like in the head as long as they don't die". Moreover, the law isn't about protecting Opera, or Firefox, or any other software company; its purpose is to protect consumers by ensuring they get to make an informed choice about the products they buy -- i.e. keeping competition on a level playing field.
Now if you want to argue that the anti-monopoly laws and/or the rulings under which they're applied are flawed, I'd agree; but to blame Opera for expecting the courts to follow through on enforcing the rulings they've made doesn't make any sense at all.