Thats odd. When I visited California a couple (few) years ago (when I was in college), I was never once asked for ID at bars and such. I know its illegal for a alcohol vendor to not check identification to determine age (the penalty starting with massive fines and accelerating to loss of liquor license or business license, depending on severity of infractions). On the other hand, a business has the right to refuse service to anyone at anytime for any reason. It is perfectly legal for a bar to refuse to accept passports as proof of age.
We already have national ID cards, but currently they are optional. Go to your local DMV and ask for a personal identification card (useful if you don't drive but still wish to purchase age restricted items or sometimes to use a credit card). On a more obvious example, passports.
Locking a ticket to a person is nothing like DRM. A ticket is not a digital issue. A performance is rent, not purchase. You aren't buying the right to watch a show forever (thats called a dvd, or a download, and requires a server), just when its live. You are purchasing an experience, like food. You get it at a specific time and place. You show an ID to buy groceries (if you use a credit or debit card), so it shouldnt be a big deal to show that you are the person who purchase a ticket.
Under my suggestion to combat scalping, you would not need ID to purchase a ticket, you would need one to attend an event. This is already implemented. A show is just like a steak; you bought it, you should be the one to eat it. If you hold a bbq (performance), you can decide who attends and who eats (attends). When someone else hosts, you can't invite yourself. Likewise, if you bought a ticket to attend a performance, you should be the one who attends. This idea is just saying that even if someone buys you a ticket, they put your name on it so no one can rob you in line and go in (and more importantly, no one can buy all the tickets and make you pay multiples of the price they paid).
I do not agree with a dutch auction, and you have absolutely no basis for coming up with such a conclusion. I believe in a free market, in which performers can decide which venues in which to perform, part of which is determinate upon their personal gain and part of which is determined upon how the prospective audience will be treated in its ability to attend and enjoy such performance (there certainly will be other considerations, but that's the basis of a free market:) ). For you to come to any other conclusion is absurd.
Again, you are retarded, because I gave you no connection between small town shows which tend not to have scalpers and performances that have scalpers which cause sellouts with significant numbers of empty seats.
Your mother must have raised you incorrectly to even try this logical fallacy. I must insist that you stop committing fallacio (its a legal term). Shame on you. I am done with your stupidity.
That's not true. No corporation pays 30% of net profits as tax.
Well of course they don't. Net profit is based on after taxes. As for gross profit, profitable corporations pay somewhere between 30-40%. Having worked as an accountant, I can assure you that there are no magical tax breaks allowing corporations to not pay taxes, or to pay ridiculous low amount like 10%. Since you don't believe me, take 10 minutes, go the SEC website, pick 10 companies at random, read their 10k reports, and see how much they paid for the last 5 years. Then look at their 10q reports and see how they planned to pay. I assure you, if they made a profit, they paid somewhere between 30 and 40% in taxes.
I absolutely would prefer that performers and those who own venues and work to get performers to perform raise prices to counter demand (just in case you can't read, which based on your response, you cannot; yes, I would like to see higher prices), and I would vastly prefer to pay more for tickets where people actually go, rather than scalpers holding out and not selling tickets, thus prohibiting me from going to the box office and buying the better seats. The lottery method in and of itself does not remove scalpers, it just cuts down on the number of them and makes the tickets even more expensive.
My biggest issue is that performers see that they sold out a concert but no one showed up, they are much, much less likely to return. Smaller cities get big names because people care about the arts in those cities, and they come out in droves. They also tend not to have scalpers.
On the other hand, I brought up nothing to encourage the concept of govenment intervention, in fact I directly stated that such intervention has failed. Venue intervention makes sense. In fact, the solution I proposed (sell tickets to people and require ID) and that others have improved upon in this forum (print the purchaser's name on the ticket and require ID) involve no government intervention whatsoever.
Next time, try to post without making absurd false accusations about my train of thought.
The problem with that is that some events are popular (like sports and concerts). I know I am not going to fight the Friday night traffic in a big city, pay the $20 for parking, and then wait in a giant line for a couple of hours (days?) only to find out that the last ticket was sold 45 minutes ago and this line is actually for the bar next door that is showing a televised feed I could have watched at home.
I'm especially not going to take a vacation day on friday, drive to the city, paying for a hotel room that I have to book months in advance to guarantee a decent palce and end up not getting a ticket for the football game on Saturday because the guy in front of me is holding a spot for 50 people who show up while I sleep. From where I stand, paying ticketmaster a $12.50 robbery fee, $2.50 to print my own ticket (seriously, wtf, they have to update the sales server to recognize a sale, whether they mail it to me or I print it, so why the hell is it more expensive to print it instead of having them cover postage?!?!?), and 6.99 for shipping/handling even though I printed my ticket and I'm the only one handling it, is still better than buying from a scalper (or as you suggest, not getting a ticket at all).
No ticket presales means mostly locals with way, way too much free time get to go to popular events. Maybe I just wanted to spend 2 hours at a concert, not 8 hours in limbo for a 2 hour concert.
Assuming is the wrong word, you must have meant recognizing. You are recognizing that there are many things wrong with scalping
There are many things wrong with scalping, but the easiest one to note is that there is already a mechanism for purchasing tickets - and it comes without scalpers. We tend to call it "buying tickets at face value from the venue or predetermined representatives of the venue who charge a price set by the venue." This is a form of PRM (as opposed to DRM), or physical restrictions management. This PRM sets the price at which entrance may be gained to a venue for a specified time or event. Scalpers arbitrarily change that price. Meanwhile, scalpers don't even necessarily raise the price, because legitimate ticket holders (those who hold tickets with the intention of using them for access to the venue) can give away their tickets if they so choose (and scalpers must compete with free, face value, and other scalpers). The right of first sale does not apply here because your ticket allows you to rent a space for a specified time. It is not transferable (and the majority of tickets explicitly state that they are not transferable, hence the legal basis for why scalping is not legal).
The effect of scalpers and season ticket holders and such (regular ticket purchasers who do not necessarily intend to attend events to which they have purchased tickets) is that events sell out, so the venue is happy, but many seats remain empty. When I go to see Wynton Marsalis and the 8 rows ahead of me are empty but I had to pay a scalper 4x face value to get a seat, something is wrong here. Meanwhile, when I can get football seats for 20 below face and their are 3 people already in my seat and I have to get security to remove them 45 minutes before kickoff because I have a legitimate ticket and they have upper deck seats, there is a bigger problem. For popular events, you have to enter an online lottery to get tickets, and you have to try to buy the maximum allowed, and then you might, just might get to buy 1 seat (as you get a lottery chance for each seat you wish to purchase individually). The lottery exists explicitly because there are so many people trying to buy blocks of seats that there has to be a mechanism for people to randomly be allowed to purchase tickets.
The easiest way to stop scalping would be to require government id (like a driver's license #) in order to purchase a ticket. I know in my state, driver's licenses have a barcode, and that the majority of tickets to venues are scanned to prove that they are legitimate. The added cost would be..,a hell of a lot less than buying from a scalper, and quite frankly, negligible (I know I don't care about the difference between a $74 and a $76 ticket, instead of $400, cash only, hope its real from a scalper). Student tickets to many ncaa school events already work this way.
Scalping is illegal in many states, and furthermore, it is also wrong to scalp tickets. Unfortunately, as long as you are allowed to transfer a ticket by simply handing it to someone else, it will be impossible to stop scalpers. That doesn't make scalping right, or OK, or not wrong, or legal, or reasonable, or acceptable. It hurts the consumer, it hurts the venue, it hurts the performers, and often, when they buy more than they can sell, it hurts the scalpers too. No one wins when scalpers exist, except apparently this team of scalpers who made $25 M (and since they have been indicted, they might also lose).
...Because I didn't? I asked a question about shots that are improper, a word whose definition, at its core, has the meaning of irregular or abnormal. I said nothing about what is proper, simply about what is improper. You know, as opposed to proper, straight shots, meaning adapted or appropriate to the purpose of circumstances; fit; suitable.
My offense stems from the use of insist; I did not persist in demanding anything with a question. You seem to have jumped to a bit of a logical fallacy there, and I must insist that you stop committing fellacio.
I think it's more about whether you're making profit from the picture,
Not exactly.
Copyright infringement is not about whether you are making money off of an existing product, but rather whether or not you have the right to distribute it. After all, if I draw a picture (lets call it artwork for the sake of the point), I own the copyright to that artwork. If I refuse to sell it, you do not have the right to reproduce and sell your reproductions. If I contract with you and allow you to pay me royalties for the right to distribute, or simply tell you that you can take pictures of it and sell (or give away, or otherwise use) those reproductions, then you have the right to distribute. I can tell you how many times, or for what period of time, or for what purpose I am allowing you to do so, and if you break any of those issues, you are committing copyright infringement. If I tell you that you can take a picture of my artwork, you do not, simply by that allowance, have any right to sell your picture. To take it one step further, if I am a professional [public figure who plays a sport] and you ask for an autograph, and I give you an autograph, you do not have the right to sell that autograph.
If, on the other hand, I directly tell you that I created this artwork and I do not want anyone to use it for any purpose, you cannot reproduce it. You cannot distiribute reproductions. The civil penalties that you could be held to are there explicitly because the amount of money you might have been making off of such infringement is not relevant; the cause of action is the existence of the infringement. You could be giving away copies of your reproduced photo for free, but you would still be subject to those monetary penalites. In fact, I don't have to tell you that I don't want you to use it, I simply have to do nothing (except create the artwork), and then you do not have the right to reproduce it.
When you sell photos to chinese bootleg manufacturers, you are infringing not because you are trying to make money, but because you don't have the right to distribute that photo.
I didn't say that the law must apply in a uniform manner to large and small companies alike, I said that it should. As for why, the very concept of a free market (which we currently only have in a limited state but generally agree would be a preferred business strategy here in the US, land of the anyone can do anything) requires that environmental factors regarding business are not modified by outside influences. For example, barriers to entry should only include economic (is there a market for product/service) and financial (for-profits should make a profit, non-governmental non-profits must have (private) funding, governmental for and not for profits should not compete with established organizations unless they can do so to the benefit of society; ie cheaper and better, lending institutions should not be governmentally based [so as to avoid political motivations, see no child left behind and abstinence only education]), and should not include political influences (environmentalists, religious organizations that proselytize, etc; that influence regulation. In other words, its ok that PETA exists, but PETA should not be telling BSA to get rid of fishing merit badge by funding political campaigns that promise to declare it an outrage).
We are not prohibited from applying different laws to different businesses (in fact this occurs regularly, based not on size of the business but rather the content of the business itself; for example, a shoe making factory is not held to beef inspections for mad cow). In clarification, the laws that we apply to all businesses should apply to all businesses in the same manner regardless of [business success]. As for why, there is no reasonable basis for punishing success, especially success that comes only because of a broken system (fix the system, and you don't have to fix specific situational items with controversial law after controversial law).
For example, large businesses should not receive specific tax credits that smaller businesses do not based on volume, as the incentive to produce larger volumes already exists (economies of scale/quantity discount pricing, expansion/growth/ROI for shareholders, etc). Small businesses, however, should not receive government loans at lower rates than large businesses, as small businesses have a larger risk of default, and the American taxpayer should not be one to shoulder such differential risk.
To address your last question, there are many, many reasons to provide different laws for different businesses, but being particularly good at what you do is not in and of itself one of them.
As an example, look at sarbanes oxley, an SEC regulation that has strict requirements for disclosure among all businesses, and higher penalties for fraud than previously existed. While some of the disclosure requirements are optional for smaller businesses (specifically when adherence would make it prohibitively expensive), this does not mean that small businesses can commit fraud without the new penalties for getting caught. While SOX is good for businesses because it gives (stupid) shareholders more faith in the honesty of business filings, it is actually bad for businesses because it doesn't actually make businesses any more honest. Furthermore, it makes 10k/10q filings less understandable. Meanwhile, larger businesses should have to hire more people for all of the new disclosure requirements, but in practice, they just increase the workload of their present employees. This leads to more burnout turnover, which is bad for both employers and employees, simply because a company, as you put it, dominates the market.
I don't understand what you mean by 'conceptually elegant'. 'Because it looks good' is not a reason to regulate. I assure you that you agree with me on this point. For example, I am against legislation allowing gay marriage because I am against the concept of any marriage. Its just a tax liability loophole, whereas people can create individual contracts to live together and combine assets in the formation of a family unit (whether or not they have children or even the ability to have children) regardless of sexual orientation so long as you don't call it a marriage contract (instead, call it an llc), therefore the concept is ridiculous (granted, there are a few tax credit/deductions that can only be earned through a marriage contract, but whoever heard of getting married so that you have a different standard deduction?). See how regulation regarding gay marriage is explicitly unecessary, as all people should be held to the same standard of regulation, just as businesses should?
Small businesses are exempt from labor and regulatory requirements because it would be both impossible to enforce and impossible to implement (both from a prohibitively expensive standpoint and from a reasonableness standpoint) in the majority of small businesses. This does not mean that our current laws are accurate or reasonable.
You seem to not understand the difference between what does exist vs what should be. I did not contradict myself. You can start a philosophical discussion about whether businesses care about customers beyond doing the bare minimum to keep people buying stuff, but in reality, without government interference, the purpose of a business is not to make money (see publicly traded company, government regulation of for detailed explanation).
Give me an explanation of why so, and I will tell you why you are wrong.
This change in the legal system would not reflect a massive change in human worldview; it's just a change in the mechanics of how civil lawsuits are brought and reviewed. The argument against it would sound like ' this change would cause those who have been harmed to not bring cases because defendents are large organizations that have better legal resources and the risk of having to pay when a lawsuit is warranted (even if the outcome is unlikely to be favorable) is not something that our legal system is designed for. A court of law is a justice system, it is not designed to intimidate.' Or something along those lines.
Meanwhile, we already have meaningful consequences for losers of a civil suit - the public record that the loser is wrong in the facts of a civil lawsuit, court costs, time spent, etc.
The US legal system is a method through which the US government finds issues to jump upon and regulate. Furthermore, the legal system exists solely because it is a function of government (hence why we call it a court of law).
Parent is also wrong; all organizations, regardless of size, should be held to the same level of regulation.Society does have a say in how every organization is run, its called a combination of laws, public ownership (stock), and political harm (environmentalists). Society should not, however, control how an organization is run. Recently, banks were told exactly how to be run by society, at great cost to society. We should have allowed banks to fail, so that new banks could take over and succeed. Instead, every US citizen is now paying for banks not failing by having their credit card interest rates hiked (mine went from 4% to 12%, but people with bad credit are seeing upwards of 30%) due to regulation telling banks how to run their organization. This is just a contemporary example of why government intervention = everyone loses.
Larger organizations may be subject to more scrutiny, but the laws should not differ simply because your company makes more money.
You are allowed to bundle items for sale so long as they are also sold as individual items.
Since you can buy a computer without the windows OS, you can also by one with windows. You can even offer a discount for buying both hardware and software.
Its the exact same concept as fast food restaurants employ. You don't want the fries and the drink with your gyro? Then don't get the combo. You want chicken in your gyro? Yeah, we used to sell a chicken gyro, now you buy a gyro and add chicken for an extra fifty cents. I'm sorry, that coupon is for dine-in only.
On the other hand, a customer is not compelled to buy a manufactured computer in the first place. Anyone can go out and buy a motherboard, a processor, RAM, etc, and build their own computer. They can do research on all the parts they need, how it works, make a project of it. Let's face it, we all know (or at least should know) someone who had no computer knowledge, read a book, and built a computer in under a weekend.
From the bill, your third strike allows the accuser to press for charges of up to 15,000 (New Zealand) dollars (roughly 10.5k USD) as well as suspending the account of the alleged infringer for up to 6 months.
It seems wrong to me that an alleged infringer (not a convicted one) can have their internet access suspended.
According to the National institution for educational statistics,
In 1990, total expenditures per student were 7365. In 2002, this rose to 9139. The average for 2009 was 9963.
These numbers are inflation-adjusted, which means the general growth in expenditure historically (inflation adjusted) is less than 5%.
These laptops are only $1000 laptops, and extrapolating, are roughly 10% of the expenditures of one year for a tool that could influence every aspect of education and will be used for multiple years. Seems reasonable to me...
No, the school has no business with what your child does off of school property regardless of whether or not you want the school to play babysitter. Be a parent dammit.
The school's right to inform parents also only applies to what occurs on school property. The only exception would be things like school sponsored trips, where the school is still the guardian. In your own home, their is never a reason for the school to have access.
Ordinarily I would agree with you, but part of the contract for employment stipulated that in order to be employed, employees must clock in and out as part of procedure (along with a large list of other issues, like how employees earn additional shifts, promotions, health and safety requirements, etc). Actually quite legal, provided you are in a right to work state (you can be fired for any reason at any time, but you can also quit mid-shift if you so choose, all without penalty).
By omitting the clock in / clock out procedure, employees had not worked, and therefore, the time worked would be 0, thus no payment.
Granted, we used an electronic system, but there is no reason that this couldn't be implemented manually by having employees sign in and out on a form and having managers sign a copy for employee records.
Really, its a gray area from a legal standpoint. Since it is not illegal to require employees to clock in / clock out, it is not illegal to not pay them when they break rules, provided that they are aware of the consequences of breaking specific or general rules. If employees don't wish to adhere to rules, they can either suffer the legal consequences (no pay for the shift) or find a new job.
To be fair, I never heard of a single person who failed to clock in or out more than once, so it was a sound policy...
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Thats odd. When I visited California a couple (few) years ago (when I was in college), I was never once asked for ID at bars and such. I know its illegal for a alcohol vendor to not check identification to determine age (the penalty starting with massive fines and accelerating to loss of liquor license or business license, depending on severity of infractions). On the other hand, a business has the right to refuse service to anyone at anytime for any reason. It is perfectly legal for a bar to refuse to accept passports as proof of age.
We already have national ID cards, but currently they are optional. Go to your local DMV and ask for a personal identification card (useful if you don't drive but still wish to purchase age restricted items or sometimes to use a credit card). On a more obvious example, passports.
Are you mentally retarded?
Locking a ticket to a person is nothing like DRM. A ticket is not a digital issue. A performance is rent, not purchase. You aren't buying the right to watch a show forever (thats called a dvd, or a download, and requires a server), just when its live. You are purchasing an experience, like food. You get it at a specific time and place. You show an ID to buy groceries (if you use a credit or debit card), so it shouldnt be a big deal to show that you are the person who purchase a ticket.
Under my suggestion to combat scalping, you would not need ID to purchase a ticket, you would need one to attend an event. This is already implemented. A show is just like a steak; you bought it, you should be the one to eat it. If you hold a bbq (performance), you can decide who attends and who eats (attends). When someone else hosts, you can't invite yourself. Likewise, if you bought a ticket to attend a performance, you should be the one who attends. This idea is just saying that even if someone buys you a ticket, they put your name on it so no one can rob you in line and go in (and more importantly, no one can buy all the tickets and make you pay multiples of the price they paid).
I do not agree with a dutch auction, and you have absolutely no basis for coming up with such a conclusion. I believe in a free market, in which performers can decide which venues in which to perform, part of which is determinate upon their personal gain and part of which is determined upon how the prospective audience will be treated in its ability to attend and enjoy such performance (there certainly will be other considerations, but that's the basis of a free market :) ). For you to come to any other conclusion is absurd.
Again, you are retarded, because I gave you no connection between small town shows which tend not to have scalpers and performances that have scalpers which cause sellouts with significant numbers of empty seats.
Your mother must have raised you incorrectly to even try this logical fallacy. I must insist that you stop committing fallacio (its a legal term). Shame on you. I am done with your stupidity.
That's not true. No corporation pays 30% of net profits as tax.
Well of course they don't. Net profit is based on after taxes. As for gross profit, profitable corporations pay somewhere between 30-40%. Having worked as an accountant, I can assure you that there are no magical tax breaks allowing corporations to not pay taxes, or to pay ridiculous low amount like 10%. Since you don't believe me, take 10 minutes, go the SEC website, pick 10 companies at random, read their 10k reports, and see how much they paid for the last 5 years. Then look at their 10q reports and see how they planned to pay. I assure you, if they made a profit, they paid somewhere between 30 and 40% in taxes.
I absolutely would prefer that performers and those who own venues and work to get performers to perform raise prices to counter demand (just in case you can't read, which based on your response, you cannot; yes, I would like to see higher prices), and I would vastly prefer to pay more for tickets where people actually go, rather than scalpers holding out and not selling tickets, thus prohibiting me from going to the box office and buying the better seats. The lottery method in and of itself does not remove scalpers, it just cuts down on the number of them and makes the tickets even more expensive.
My biggest issue is that performers see that they sold out a concert but no one showed up, they are much, much less likely to return. Smaller cities get big names because people care about the arts in those cities, and they come out in droves. They also tend not to have scalpers.
On the other hand, I brought up nothing to encourage the concept of govenment intervention, in fact I directly stated that such intervention has failed. Venue intervention makes sense. In fact, the solution I proposed (sell tickets to people and require ID) and that others have improved upon in this forum (print the purchaser's name on the ticket and require ID) involve no government intervention whatsoever.
Next time, try to post without making absurd false accusations about my train of thought.
The problem with that is that some events are popular (like sports and concerts). I know I am not going to fight the Friday night traffic in a big city, pay the $20 for parking, and then wait in a giant line for a couple of hours (days?) only to find out that the last ticket was sold 45 minutes ago and this line is actually for the bar next door that is showing a televised feed I could have watched at home.
I'm especially not going to take a vacation day on friday, drive to the city, paying for a hotel room that I have to book months in advance to guarantee a decent palce and end up not getting a ticket for the football game on Saturday because the guy in front of me is holding a spot for 50 people who show up while I sleep. From where I stand, paying ticketmaster a $12.50 robbery fee, $2.50 to print my own ticket (seriously, wtf, they have to update the sales server to recognize a sale, whether they mail it to me or I print it, so why the hell is it more expensive to print it instead of having them cover postage?!?!?), and 6.99 for shipping/handling even though I printed my ticket and I'm the only one handling it, is still better than buying from a scalper (or as you suggest, not getting a ticket at all).
No ticket presales means mostly locals with way, way too much free time get to go to popular events. Maybe I just wanted to spend 2 hours at a concert, not 8 hours in limbo for a 2 hour concert.
Assuming is the wrong word, you must have meant recognizing. You are recognizing that there are many things wrong with scalping
There are many things wrong with scalping, but the easiest one to note is that there is already a mechanism for purchasing tickets - and it comes without scalpers. We tend to call it "buying tickets at face value from the venue or predetermined representatives of the venue who charge a price set by the venue." This is a form of PRM (as opposed to DRM), or physical restrictions management. This PRM sets the price at which entrance may be gained to a venue for a specified time or event. Scalpers arbitrarily change that price. Meanwhile, scalpers don't even necessarily raise the price, because legitimate ticket holders (those who hold tickets with the intention of using them for access to the venue) can give away their tickets if they so choose (and scalpers must compete with free, face value, and other scalpers). The right of first sale does not apply here because your ticket allows you to rent a space for a specified time. It is not transferable (and the majority of tickets explicitly state that they are not transferable, hence the legal basis for why scalping is not legal).
The effect of scalpers and season ticket holders and such (regular ticket purchasers who do not necessarily intend to attend events to which they have purchased tickets) is that events sell out, so the venue is happy, but many seats remain empty. When I go to see Wynton Marsalis and the 8 rows ahead of me are empty but I had to pay a scalper 4x face value to get a seat, something is wrong here. Meanwhile, when I can get football seats for 20 below face and their are 3 people already in my seat and I have to get security to remove them 45 minutes before kickoff because I have a legitimate ticket and they have upper deck seats, there is a bigger problem. For popular events, you have to enter an online lottery to get tickets, and you have to try to buy the maximum allowed, and then you might, just might get to buy 1 seat (as you get a lottery chance for each seat you wish to purchase individually). The lottery exists explicitly because there are so many people trying to buy blocks of seats that there has to be a mechanism for people to randomly be allowed to purchase tickets.
The easiest way to stop scalping would be to require government id (like a driver's license #) in order to purchase a ticket. I know in my state, driver's licenses have a barcode, and that the majority of tickets to venues are scanned to prove that they are legitimate. The added cost would be..,a hell of a lot less than buying from a scalper, and quite frankly, negligible (I know I don't care about the difference between a $74 and a $76 ticket, instead of $400, cash only, hope its real from a scalper). Student tickets to many ncaa school events already work this way.
Scalping is illegal in many states, and furthermore, it is also wrong to scalp tickets. Unfortunately, as long as you are allowed to transfer a ticket by simply handing it to someone else, it will be impossible to stop scalpers. That doesn't make scalping right, or OK, or not wrong, or legal, or reasonable, or acceptable. It hurts the consumer, it hurts the venue, it hurts the performers, and often, when they buy more than they can sell, it hurts the scalpers too. No one wins when scalpers exist, except apparently this team of scalpers who made $25 M (and since they have been indicted, they might also lose).
I was going for funny, but woosh, and again WOOOOOOOOOSH!!!!!
...Because I didn't? I asked a question about shots that are improper, a word whose definition, at its core, has the meaning of irregular or abnormal. I said nothing about what is proper, simply about what is improper. You know, as opposed to proper, straight shots, meaning adapted or appropriate to the purpose of circumstances; fit; suitable.
My offense stems from the use of insist; I did not persist in demanding anything with a question. You seem to have jumped to a bit of a logical fallacy there, and I must insist that you stop committing fellacio.
Why is it called english when you mean that you shoot the ball improperly; eg. not a straight shot?
...I thought the capititalization of words was odd...well done sir.
I think it's more about whether you're making profit from the picture,
Not exactly.
Copyright infringement is not about whether you are making money off of an existing product, but rather whether or not you have the right to distribute it. After all, if I draw a picture (lets call it artwork for the sake of the point), I own the copyright to that artwork. If I refuse to sell it, you do not have the right to reproduce and sell your reproductions. If I contract with you and allow you to pay me royalties for the right to distribute, or simply tell you that you can take pictures of it and sell (or give away, or otherwise use) those reproductions, then you have the right to distribute. I can tell you how many times, or for what period of time, or for what purpose I am allowing you to do so, and if you break any of those issues, you are committing copyright infringement. If I tell you that you can take a picture of my artwork, you do not, simply by that allowance, have any right to sell your picture. To take it one step further, if I am a professional [public figure who plays a sport] and you ask for an autograph, and I give you an autograph, you do not have the right to sell that autograph.
If, on the other hand, I directly tell you that I created this artwork and I do not want anyone to use it for any purpose, you cannot reproduce it. You cannot distiribute reproductions. The civil penalties that you could be held to are there explicitly because the amount of money you might have been making off of such infringement is not relevant; the cause of action is the existence of the infringement. You could be giving away copies of your reproduced photo for free, but you would still be subject to those monetary penalites. In fact, I don't have to tell you that I don't want you to use it, I simply have to do nothing (except create the artwork), and then you do not have the right to reproduce it.
When you sell photos to chinese bootleg manufacturers, you are infringing not because you are trying to make money, but because you don't have the right to distribute that photo.
Given that each person will only lose one cent per lifetime, I propose to move $0.01 from each bank account in the world to my own account.
Sorry, that solution isn't random (even if it does solve the issue of uniformity).
Not quite.
I didn't say that the law must apply in a uniform manner to large and small companies alike, I said that it should. As for why, the very concept of a free market (which we currently only have in a limited state but generally agree would be a preferred business strategy here in the US, land of the anyone can do anything) requires that environmental factors regarding business are not modified by outside influences. For example, barriers to entry should only include economic (is there a market for product/service) and financial (for-profits should make a profit, non-governmental non-profits must have (private) funding, governmental for and not for profits should not compete with established organizations unless they can do so to the benefit of society; ie cheaper and better, lending institutions should not be governmentally based [so as to avoid political motivations, see no child left behind and abstinence only education]), and should not include political influences (environmentalists, religious organizations that proselytize, etc; that influence regulation. In other words, its ok that PETA exists, but PETA should not be telling BSA to get rid of fishing merit badge by funding political campaigns that promise to declare it an outrage).
We are not prohibited from applying different laws to different businesses (in fact this occurs regularly, based not on size of the business but rather the content of the business itself; for example, a shoe making factory is not held to beef inspections for mad cow). In clarification, the laws that we apply to all businesses should apply to all businesses in the same manner regardless of [business success]. As for why, there is no reasonable basis for punishing success, especially success that comes only because of a broken system (fix the system, and you don't have to fix specific situational items with controversial law after controversial law).
For example, large businesses should not receive specific tax credits that smaller businesses do not based on volume, as the incentive to produce larger volumes already exists (economies of scale/quantity discount pricing, expansion/growth/ROI for shareholders, etc). Small businesses, however, should not receive government loans at lower rates than large businesses, as small businesses have a larger risk of default, and the American taxpayer should not be one to shoulder such differential risk.
To address your last question, there are many, many reasons to provide different laws for different businesses, but being particularly good at what you do is not in and of itself one of them.
As an example, look at sarbanes oxley, an SEC regulation that has strict requirements for disclosure among all businesses, and higher penalties for fraud than previously existed. While some of the disclosure requirements are optional for smaller businesses (specifically when adherence would make it prohibitively expensive), this does not mean that small businesses can commit fraud without the new penalties for getting caught. While SOX is good for businesses because it gives (stupid) shareholders more faith in the honesty of business filings, it is actually bad for businesses because it doesn't actually make businesses any more honest. Furthermore, it makes 10k/10q filings less understandable. Meanwhile, larger businesses should have to hire more people for all of the new disclosure requirements, but in practice, they just increase the workload of their present employees. This leads to more burnout turnover, which is bad for both employers and employees, simply because a company, as you put it, dominates the market.
Speaking directly to your response by paragraph,
I don't understand what you mean by 'conceptually elegant'. 'Because it looks good' is not a reason to regulate. I assure you that you agree with me on this point. For example, I am against legislation allowing gay marriage because I am against the concept of any marriage. Its just a tax liability loophole, whereas people can create individual contracts to live together and combine assets in the formation of a family unit (whether or not they have children or even the ability to have children) regardless of sexual orientation so long as you don't call it a marriage contract (instead, call it an llc), therefore the concept is ridiculous (granted, there are a few tax credit/deductions that can only be earned through a marriage contract, but whoever heard of getting married so that you have a different standard deduction?). See how regulation regarding gay marriage is explicitly unecessary, as all people should be held to the same standard of regulation, just as businesses should?
Small businesses are exempt from labor and regulatory requirements because it would be both impossible to enforce and impossible to implement (both from a prohibitively expensive standpoint and from a reasonableness standpoint) in the majority of small businesses. This does not mean that our current laws are accurate or reasonable.
You seem to not understand the difference between what does exist vs what should be. I did not contradict myself. You can start a philosophical discussion about whether businesses care about customers beyond doing the bare minimum to keep people buying stuff, but in reality, without government interference, the purpose of a business is not to make money (see publicly traded company, government regulation of for detailed explanation).
Give me an explanation of why so, and I will tell you why you are wrong.
I see a flaw in your argument.
This change in the legal system would not reflect a massive change in human worldview; it's just a change in the mechanics of how civil lawsuits are brought and reviewed. The argument against it would sound like ' this change would cause those who have been harmed to not bring cases because defendents are large organizations that have better legal resources and the risk of having to pay when a lawsuit is warranted (even if the outcome is unlikely to be favorable) is not something that our legal system is designed for. A court of law is a justice system, it is not designed to intimidate.' Or something along those lines.
Meanwhile, we already have meaningful consequences for losers of a civil suit - the public record that the loser is wrong in the facts of a civil lawsuit, court costs, time spent, etc.
Who modded you insightful?
The US legal system is a method through which the US government finds issues to jump upon and regulate. Furthermore, the legal system exists solely because it is a function of government (hence why we call it a court of law).
Parent is also wrong; all organizations, regardless of size, should be held to the same level of regulation.Society does have a say in how every organization is run, its called a combination of laws, public ownership (stock), and political harm (environmentalists). Society should not, however, control how an organization is run. Recently, banks were told exactly how to be run by society, at great cost to society. We should have allowed banks to fail, so that new banks could take over and succeed. Instead, every US citizen is now paying for banks not failing by having their credit card interest rates hiked (mine went from 4% to 12%, but people with bad credit are seeing upwards of 30%) due to regulation telling banks how to run their organization. This is just a contemporary example of why government intervention = everyone loses.
Larger organizations may be subject to more scrutiny, but the laws should not differ simply because your company makes more money.
You are allowed to bundle items for sale so long as they are also sold as individual items.
Since you can buy a computer without the windows OS, you can also by one with windows. You can even offer a discount for buying both hardware and software.
Its the exact same concept as fast food restaurants employ. You don't want the fries and the drink with your gyro? Then don't get the combo. You want chicken in your gyro? Yeah, we used to sell a chicken gyro, now you buy a gyro and add chicken for an extra fifty cents. I'm sorry, that coupon is for dine-in only.
On the other hand, a customer is not compelled to buy a manufactured computer in the first place. Anyone can go out and buy a motherboard, a processor, RAM, etc, and build their own computer. They can do research on all the parts they need, how it works, make a project of it. Let's face it, we all know (or at least should know) someone who had no computer knowledge, read a book, and built a computer in under a weekend.
Not exactly.
From the bill, your third strike allows the accuser to press for charges of up to 15,000 (New Zealand) dollars (roughly 10.5k USD) as well as suspending the account of the alleged infringer for up to 6 months.
It seems wrong to me that an alleged infringer (not a convicted one) can have their internet access suspended.
You dipshit fuckwad moderators.
Ok, mods, make it 5, offtopic then.
How old are you?
According to the National institution for educational statistics,
In 1990, total expenditures per student were 7365.
In 2002, this rose to 9139.
The average for 2009 was 9963.
These numbers are inflation-adjusted, which means the general growth in expenditure historically (inflation adjusted) is less than 5%.
These laptops are only $1000 laptops, and extrapolating, are roughly 10% of the expenditures of one year for a tool that could influence every aspect of education and will be used for multiple years. Seems reasonable to me...
No, the school has no business with what your child does off of school property regardless of whether or not you want the school to play babysitter. Be a parent dammit.
The school's right to inform parents also only applies to what occurs on school property. The only exception would be things like school sponsored trips, where the school is still the guardian. In your own home, their is never a reason for the school to have access.
Paying clerks $6.00 an hour to work from midnight to 8:00AM does not buy a lot of loyalty.
Especially since federal minimum wage is 7.25 an hour...
Oddly enough, I'm quite certain you actually filled out your reports, thus fulfilling the requirements.
You cannot get paid (hourly, not salary) if your employer does not know how much you have worked. QED.
Ordinarily I would agree with you, but part of the contract for employment stipulated that in order to be employed, employees must clock in and out as part of procedure (along with a large list of other issues, like how employees earn additional shifts, promotions, health and safety requirements, etc). Actually quite legal, provided you are in a right to work state (you can be fired for any reason at any time, but you can also quit mid-shift if you so choose, all without penalty).
By omitting the clock in / clock out procedure, employees had not worked, and therefore, the time worked would be 0, thus no payment.
Granted, we used an electronic system, but there is no reason that this couldn't be implemented manually by having employees sign in and out on a form and having managers sign a copy for employee records.
Really, its a gray area from a legal standpoint. Since it is not illegal to require employees to clock in / clock out, it is not illegal to not pay them when they break rules, provided that they are aware of the consequences of breaking specific or general rules. If employees don't wish to adhere to rules, they can either suffer the legal consequences (no pay for the shift) or find a new job.
To be fair, I never heard of a single person who failed to clock in or out more than once, so it was a sound policy...