Except, of course, that the case is not about people creating alternate content (tap water) and delivering that, it is about people using the owners works without permission (putting a tap directly into their tank).
You are completely wrong. Your argument is basically 'since we have this wonderful new printing press, we no longer need authors, editors, or proofreaders'. It makes no sense at all.
When you 'capture data' to take a digital picture, Kodak has no involvement (other than maybe patents which your camera manufacturer has already paid for). There is no need for physical photographic materials, and no legislation is going to fix that.
When you 'acquire data' which is a song or movie, someone else is most definitely involved. Someone create that work. Someone paid for it. Someone produced it, etc. That someone is who IP laws protect, not some random CD/DVD pressing factory.
If you don't think there is a need for 'content companies', don't use their product. There is no legislation that says you have to buy their product. There is no legislation that says only members of the MPAA/RIAA can produce movies and records. However, IF you want their product, there is no reason they should not benefit from creating a product you desire.
Stop trying to equate 'content producers' with 'physical media producers'. They are not the same thing. There is no legislation that protects physical media producers.
That is just stupid. Legislation does not help if people do not want your product (film cameras). However, if people DO want and use your product, but find ways to avoid paying for it, the legislation helps. The 'products' movie studios and record labels are making are movies and songs, not little shiny disks. The fact that piracy exists proves that people want the product.
I think you greatly underestimate the value those actors bring. They are not just voices added after the animation is done. The personalities of the actors is used to make the characters themselves. Woody from Toy Story IS Tom Hanks. Buzz IS Tim Allen. Would Alladin be the same movie without Robin Williams as the genie?
They have a reason - the missing black box. The black box is part of the airbag system. The airbags deployed. What made that happen - pure luck? So your case comes down to the black box somehow survived long enough to deploy the airbags, then magically was destroyed/disappeared from it's location under your seat, yet you still survived the accident (in good enough condition to destroy the black box). Good luck getting a jury to buy that one while you sit there providing no defense.
You are very, very wrong. First, if the insurance company says they're not going to pay, how are you going to collect the money? The only way to do that is for YOU to sue THEM. That makes YOU the plaintiff, not the defendant. And, as the plaintiff, it is up to YOU to show why they must pay you.
Independent of that, as others have pointed out, a civil case is not a criminal case. In a criminal case, the prosecution must prove it's case, and the defense doesn't really have to do anything. The hurdle the prosecution must overcome is 'reasonable doubt'. In a civil case, BOTH sides have equal responsibility, because the burden is 'preponderance of the evidence', meaning whoever has the most credible evidence wins. So when the insurance company shows up and says 'we have been involved with thousands of cases, and the black boxes almost always survive, and when they don't survive we can piece together what happened to it, and this case indicates that what happened to it was willful destruction', and you sit there saying nothing, you WILL lose.
Right. That was my point. If you see they are planning to replace you, you can quit. I they see you are planning on leaving, they can fire you. Seems fair to me.
"Free press" does not, and never has, meant that any and everyone has access to a press. "Free press" does not, and never has, meant that any and everybody has access to the materials printed. "Free press" means that IF you have a press the government does not control what you print.
How about: policemen, firemen, and public defenders are paid by the public from taxes, and doctors are paid by the patients they treat. Even in the case of Medicare/Medicaid the doctors are not public employees, the public is just helping to pay for the care of a specific person. Doctors are no more 'public servants' than barbers and plumbers are.
Again, we are not talking about a doctor refusing to perform medically necessary treatment on someone, we are talking about a doctor being forced to perform non-necessary treatment just because someone asked for it. The fact that you keep trying to drag already illegal discrimination into it leads me to believe that you know your position is very weak.
If a community is so remote that there is only one doctor, and that doctor is forced to retire because he doesn't want to perform abortions, how exactly does that help the community? A community with no health care at all is better off than a community where you can't get an abortion? Or do you think that other doctors are just lining up waiting for their shot to be the doctor who is required to do anything anyone asks in a community with so few people it can only support one doctor?
What if there is more than one doctor, and none of them are willing to do abortions? Who gets to be the lucky guy who is forced to go against his beliefs?
Why is abortion a special class of elective medical procedure, to the point that a doctor who doesn't perform it is forced to retire? If someone really, really wants their tongue bifurcated, should the doctor be required to do it? How about if I want my left arm cut off and grafted to the top of my head? Hey, it's my body, right? You are the doctor therefore you are REQUIRED to do that, or you must retire. Pretty stupid, eh?
I just re-read this, and I can't believe how stupid it is. First of how, exactly how does a doctor 'sign up' to be THE caretaker of health for the community? Unless he is an employee of the municipality (and certainly most are not), he is either in his own private practice or works for someone else. If he is an employee, then his employee contract will say what services he must provide. Very doubtful that 'perform abortions' would be required by any employer other than an abortion clinic.
A doctor, at most (like any other job) should be expected to perform his duties to the best of his ability without discriminating against race, religion, etc. A doctors duties are treating medical problems.
As a medical condition, an unwanted pregnancy is exactly the same as a wanted one. The medical treatment and care of the patient is the same. If a doctor was refusing pre-natal care based on the race or religion of the patient, that would be a problem. If a doctor was refusing pre-natal care because he is a dermatologist, that is not a problem.
The difference between unwanted and wanted pregnancies is not medical. It is social, economic, emotional, maybe even criminal. Since when is a doctor required to solve social, economic, emotional, or criminal problems?
Refusing to provide an abortion to someone because she is black would be a problem. Refusing to provide abortions to anyone at all? Not a problem in the slightest.
Saying a doctor should be required to provide abortions against his morals is no different than saying a physicist should be required to work on nuclear weapons just because he is a physicist, or an engineer required to work on execution machines because he is an engineer.
Best security practice is to not have ATMs. Or electronic banking. Or paper checks. Or bank accounts. Or credit/debit cards. Or even cash. All of them have been abused by criminals. However, out here in the real world most people don't live in a constant state of paranoia about what criminals might do, and they don't like it when they can't access their money.
Eh? You have now somehow magically changed the question from 'should a doctor be required to perform not medically required procedures' to 'can a doctor discriminate based on sexual orientation'. Those two questions have absolutely nothing to do with each other. And, BTW, the answer to your question is 'of course'. It would be perfectly reasonable for a podiatrist to refuse to deliver a baby, gay mom or not.
"Pregnancy" is not a disease. It is not a 'health care' issue that requires correcting. Except in very rare cases, there is no medical requirement for an abortion.
If your point is that a doctor is required to do anything a patient asks, where do you draw the line? Is a doctor required to perform piercings and other body mutilations? Is a doctor required to provide drugs just because a patient wants them? Is a doctor required to end a life?
Would you discriminate against a high-school dropout performing brain surgery on your child? If you are hiring firefighters, are you going to choose the 80 year old lady in a wheelchair, or the healthy 22 year old male? Do you think it should be legal for a man to marry his cat, so that the cat gets health benefits and the man gets a tax deduction?
If you answered anything other than 'yes, male, and no', you are either a liar or an idiot.
Discrimination is a necessary fact of life. Without it, we don't survive. Now, you may not like the criteria some people use when they discriminate, and that would be a valid discussion, but claiming there should be no discrimination is just moronic.
In what way are 'copyleft' (what a stupid term) workarounds for copyright law? All copyright law does is say that the owner of a work gets to decide how, when, and who may distribute it. GPL is doing exactly that. Since nobody except the copyright holder can release something under the GPL, it is no more of a 'workaround' than any other copyright license. Exactly which portions of 'current copyright law' are copyleft licenses magically skirting?
Do you think those COBOL programs are still running on 1960's servers running DOS (the IBM one from the 60s)? I think IBM qualifies as a business OS vendor. z/OS has a new release about annually, and the previous release reaches end-of-service about 2 years later. The key is not how long a particular release is supported, it is how compatible each release is with the previous releases.
There is a world of difference between saying sometimes innovative technologies are held up for business reasons and saying that businesses NEVER innovate. It is obvious to anyone with half a brain that businesses DO in fact innovate. Just look at a smart phone, for instance. Everything from the battery to the display to the touch screen to the manufacturing processes that allow so much function to be packed in such a small space required innovation, most of it done by businesses looking to 'make a buck'.
If getting elected is the 'profit', how does using public funds to get elected remove the 'profit motive'?
The insider trading thing has nothing to do with campaign donations, so I don't know why you bring that up except as a red herring.
Just a few years ago (less so today), an endorsement from a major newspaper editor was worth way more than millions of dollars of TV ads. Should that also have been banned? How about someone who organizes a huge rally in support of a candidate - ban that too? Well-known people speaking for a candidate - ban that? Operating a web site or blog in support of a candidate - ban it?
A ban on any one of those things (including giving money to facilitate those and other things) can be viewed as nothing more than a restriction on free speech. Worse (much worse), it is a restriction on political free speech - the exact thing the first amendment is supposed to protect against.
I don't see how using public money instead of private means that the candidate suddenly does not have to continue eating and paying bills. It also doesn't mean the candidate doesn't need staff. Campaign events are not held at costly venues, fundraisers are.
People and organizations donate to campaigns for one simple reason - to help get the candidate elected. An unelected candidate is useless no matter how much money you gave him. Donors are not going to be happy with a candidate who lines his own pockets instead of spending the money to help get elected.
So that leaves us with your last point - that getting elected itself is the profit. Well, by that logic the candidate is 'beholden' to anyone who helps get him elected. He is beholden to the newspaper editor who endorses him. He is beholden to the guy who starts a whisper campaign. He is beholden to the guy who organized a large demonstration in support of the candidate. He is beholden to the guy who found out some damaging info about his opponent. He is beholden to the guy who runs a popular blog in support of the candidate. Should we also ban all of those things?
There is no difference, from either a freedom of speech or influence point of view, between any of the above and donating money.
Campaign incomes and expenditures are a matter of public record. It should be easy for you to tell us exactly how much money goes to the politicians.
As for the rest of your post: "free speech" isn't just a metaphor. It doesn't matter if you become "vital" to a candidate being elected by going door-to-door, standing on a street corner handing out fliers, putting up a billboard, buying a TV ad, or donating money so someone else can be paid to do the above. It is all free speech.
What is the 'profit motive'? Donations to campaigns are just that - donations to campaigns. The candidates do not get to use that money for anything other than campaigning, doing so is illegal. Paying money directly to a politician is also illegal - it is a bribe. So, removing campaign donations removes no profit motive that is already not illegal.
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Except, of course, that the case is not about people creating alternate content (tap water) and delivering that, it is about people using the owners works without permission (putting a tap directly into their tank).
You are completely wrong. Your argument is basically 'since we have this wonderful new printing press, we no longer need authors, editors, or proofreaders'. It makes no sense at all.
When you 'capture data' to take a digital picture, Kodak has no involvement (other than maybe patents which your camera manufacturer has already paid for). There is no need for physical photographic materials, and no legislation is going to fix that.
When you 'acquire data' which is a song or movie, someone else is most definitely involved. Someone create that work. Someone paid for it. Someone produced it, etc. That someone is who IP laws protect, not some random CD/DVD pressing factory.
If you don't think there is a need for 'content companies', don't use their product. There is no legislation that says you have to buy their product. There is no legislation that says only members of the MPAA/RIAA can produce movies and records. However, IF you want their product, there is no reason they should not benefit from creating a product you desire.
Stop trying to equate 'content producers' with 'physical media producers'. They are not the same thing. There is no legislation that protects physical media producers.
That is just stupid. Legislation does not help if people do not want your product (film cameras). However, if people DO want and use your product, but find ways to avoid paying for it, the legislation helps. The 'products' movie studios and record labels are making are movies and songs, not little shiny disks. The fact that piracy exists proves that people want the product.
The two things are not similar at all.
I think you greatly underestimate the value those actors bring. They are not just voices added after the animation is done. The personalities of the actors is used to make the characters themselves. Woody from Toy Story IS Tom Hanks. Buzz IS Tim Allen. Would Alladin be the same movie without Robin Williams as the genie?
They have a reason - the missing black box. The black box is part of the airbag system. The airbags deployed. What made that happen - pure luck? So your case comes down to the black box somehow survived long enough to deploy the airbags, then magically was destroyed/disappeared from it's location under your seat, yet you still survived the accident (in good enough condition to destroy the black box). Good luck getting a jury to buy that one while you sit there providing no defense.
You are very, very wrong. First, if the insurance company says they're not going to pay, how are you going to collect the money? The only way to do that is for YOU to sue THEM. That makes YOU the plaintiff, not the defendant. And, as the plaintiff, it is up to YOU to show why they must pay you.
Independent of that, as others have pointed out, a civil case is not a criminal case. In a criminal case, the prosecution must prove it's case, and the defense doesn't really have to do anything. The hurdle the prosecution must overcome is 'reasonable doubt'. In a civil case, BOTH sides have equal responsibility, because the burden is 'preponderance of the evidence', meaning whoever has the most credible evidence wins. So when the insurance company shows up and says 'we have been involved with thousands of cases, and the black boxes almost always survive, and when they don't survive we can piece together what happened to it, and this case indicates that what happened to it was willful destruction', and you sit there saying nothing, you WILL lose.
Right. That was my point. If you see they are planning to replace you, you can quit. I they see you are planning on leaving, they can fire you. Seems fair to me.
"Free press" does not, and never has, meant that any and everyone has access to a press. "Free press" does not, and never has, meant that any and everybody has access to the materials printed. "Free press" means that IF you have a press the government does not control what you print.
Make sense - sure. Required - absolutely not.
And if you see your employer posted your position on a job site, you are free to terminate your employment, are you not?
How about: policemen, firemen, and public defenders are paid by the public from taxes, and doctors are paid by the patients they treat. Even in the case of Medicare/Medicaid the doctors are not public employees, the public is just helping to pay for the care of a specific person. Doctors are no more 'public servants' than barbers and plumbers are.
Again, we are not talking about a doctor refusing to perform medically necessary treatment on someone, we are talking about a doctor being forced to perform non-necessary treatment just because someone asked for it. The fact that you keep trying to drag already illegal discrimination into it leads me to believe that you know your position is very weak.
If a community is so remote that there is only one doctor, and that doctor is forced to retire because he doesn't want to perform abortions, how exactly does that help the community? A community with no health care at all is better off than a community where you can't get an abortion? Or do you think that other doctors are just lining up waiting for their shot to be the doctor who is required to do anything anyone asks in a community with so few people it can only support one doctor?
What if there is more than one doctor, and none of them are willing to do abortions? Who gets to be the lucky guy who is forced to go against his beliefs?
Why is abortion a special class of elective medical procedure, to the point that a doctor who doesn't perform it is forced to retire? If someone really, really wants their tongue bifurcated, should the doctor be required to do it? How about if I want my left arm cut off and grafted to the top of my head? Hey, it's my body, right? You are the doctor therefore you are REQUIRED to do that, or you must retire. Pretty stupid, eh?
I just re-read this, and I can't believe how stupid it is. First of how, exactly how does a doctor 'sign up' to be THE caretaker of health for the community? Unless he is an employee of the municipality (and certainly most are not), he is either in his own private practice or works for someone else. If he is an employee, then his employee contract will say what services he must provide. Very doubtful that 'perform abortions' would be required by any employer other than an abortion clinic.
A doctor, at most (like any other job) should be expected to perform his duties to the best of his ability without discriminating against race, religion, etc. A doctors duties are treating medical problems.
As a medical condition, an unwanted pregnancy is exactly the same as a wanted one. The medical treatment and care of the patient is the same. If a doctor was refusing pre-natal care based on the race or religion of the patient, that would be a problem. If a doctor was refusing pre-natal care because he is a dermatologist, that is not a problem.
The difference between unwanted and wanted pregnancies is not medical. It is social, economic, emotional, maybe even criminal. Since when is a doctor required to solve social, economic, emotional, or criminal problems?
Refusing to provide an abortion to someone because she is black would be a problem. Refusing to provide abortions to anyone at all? Not a problem in the slightest.
Saying a doctor should be required to provide abortions against his morals is no different than saying a physicist should be required to work on nuclear weapons just because he is a physicist, or an engineer required to work on execution machines because he is an engineer.
Best security practice is to not have ATMs. Or electronic banking. Or paper checks. Or bank accounts. Or credit/debit cards. Or even cash. All of them have been abused by criminals. However, out here in the real world most people don't live in a constant state of paranoia about what criminals might do, and they don't like it when they can't access their money.
Eh? You have now somehow magically changed the question from 'should a doctor be required to perform not medically required procedures' to 'can a doctor discriminate based on sexual orientation'. Those two questions have absolutely nothing to do with each other. And, BTW, the answer to your question is 'of course'. It would be perfectly reasonable for a podiatrist to refuse to deliver a baby, gay mom or not.
"Pregnancy" is not a disease. It is not a 'health care' issue that requires correcting. Except in very rare cases, there is no medical requirement for an abortion.
If your point is that a doctor is required to do anything a patient asks, where do you draw the line? Is a doctor required to perform piercings and other body mutilations? Is a doctor required to provide drugs just because a patient wants them? Is a doctor required to end a life?
Would you discriminate against a high-school dropout performing brain surgery on your child? If you are hiring firefighters, are you going to choose the 80 year old lady in a wheelchair, or the healthy 22 year old male? Do you think it should be legal for a man to marry his cat, so that the cat gets health benefits and the man gets a tax deduction?
If you answered anything other than 'yes, male, and no', you are either a liar or an idiot.
Discrimination is a necessary fact of life. Without it, we don't survive. Now, you may not like the criteria some people use when they discriminate, and that would be a valid discussion, but claiming there should be no discrimination is just moronic.
In what way are 'copyleft' (what a stupid term) workarounds for copyright law? All copyright law does is say that the owner of a work gets to decide how, when, and who may distribute it. GPL is doing exactly that. Since nobody except the copyright holder can release something under the GPL, it is no more of a 'workaround' than any other copyright license. Exactly which portions of 'current copyright law' are copyleft licenses magically skirting?
Read the ruling (page 15). It only revealed public locations.
Do you think those COBOL programs are still running on 1960's servers running DOS (the IBM one from the 60s)? I think IBM qualifies as a business OS vendor. z/OS has a new release about annually, and the previous release reaches end-of-service about 2 years later. The key is not how long a particular release is supported, it is how compatible each release is with the previous releases.
There is a world of difference between saying sometimes innovative technologies are held up for business reasons and saying that businesses NEVER innovate. It is obvious to anyone with half a brain that businesses DO in fact innovate. Just look at a smart phone, for instance. Everything from the battery to the display to the touch screen to the manufacturing processes that allow so much function to be packed in such a small space required innovation, most of it done by businesses looking to 'make a buck'.
If getting elected is the 'profit', how does using public funds to get elected remove the 'profit motive'?
The insider trading thing has nothing to do with campaign donations, so I don't know why you bring that up except as a red herring.
Just a few years ago (less so today), an endorsement from a major newspaper editor was worth way more than millions of dollars of TV ads. Should that also have been banned? How about someone who organizes a huge rally in support of a candidate - ban that too? Well-known people speaking for a candidate - ban that? Operating a web site or blog in support of a candidate - ban it?
A ban on any one of those things (including giving money to facilitate those and other things) can be viewed as nothing more than a restriction on free speech. Worse (much worse), it is a restriction on political free speech - the exact thing the first amendment is supposed to protect against.
I don't see how using public money instead of private means that the candidate suddenly does not have to continue eating and paying bills. It also doesn't mean the candidate doesn't need staff. Campaign events are not held at costly venues, fundraisers are.
People and organizations donate to campaigns for one simple reason - to help get the candidate elected. An unelected candidate is useless no matter how much money you gave him. Donors are not going to be happy with a candidate who lines his own pockets instead of spending the money to help get elected.
So that leaves us with your last point - that getting elected itself is the profit. Well, by that logic the candidate is 'beholden' to anyone who helps get him elected. He is beholden to the newspaper editor who endorses him. He is beholden to the guy who starts a whisper campaign. He is beholden to the guy who organized a large demonstration in support of the candidate. He is beholden to the guy who found out some damaging info about his opponent. He is beholden to the guy who runs a popular blog in support of the candidate. Should we also ban all of those things?
There is no difference, from either a freedom of speech or influence point of view, between any of the above and donating money.
Campaign incomes and expenditures are a matter of public record. It should be easy for you to tell us exactly how much money goes to the politicians.
As for the rest of your post: "free speech" isn't just a metaphor. It doesn't matter if you become "vital" to a candidate being elected by going door-to-door, standing on a street corner handing out fliers, putting up a billboard, buying a TV ad, or donating money so someone else can be paid to do the above. It is all free speech.
What is the 'profit motive'? Donations to campaigns are just that - donations to campaigns. The candidates do not get to use that money for anything other than campaigning, doing so is illegal. Paying money directly to a politician is also illegal - it is a bribe. So, removing campaign donations removes no profit motive that is already not illegal.