>You must know that here is no obligation (moral or otherwise) to fix other people's problems
Oh yes there is. The failure to recognize it is antisocial or even psychotic behaviour. That's literally the purpose for which society was invented. Indeed, it's literally the reason why we evolved as a social species. If you don't accept your share of "fixing other people's problems" as a responsibility - then you are not fit for purpose as a member of society. The only reason for tolerating your existence, indeed for saying you have a 'right to live' - the only reason NOT to murder you for your stuff, is the potential good you can do. "Good" is just a word meaning "effort spent solving other people's problems".
Call that the biological obligation. But it not a moral obligation - it is THE moral obligation, the ONLY moral obligation. It's literally the definition of all sane morality.
None of your examples come without major downsides - and in some cases the prices are not yet fully known. Modern farming techniques come at the price of the greatest cruelty in the history of animal domestication. Animal domestication used to be a symbiotic relationship - which animals and humans alike chose because it was mutually beneficial. Even the cows we ate were okay with it because the species as a whole prospered and before we ate them they got a quality of life far beyond what they could otherwise achieve - the lions were not offering a good life before eating them.
Today - the way factory farms operate, humans are no longer symbiotes with domesticated animals, we are flat out parasites now, and this is a very different thing. I would argue that, by itself this is a massive downside. And one we're not making any real effort to change. Personally, I've switched to only veal for my meat - I won't eat factory farmed meat because my conscious will not allow me to participate in a parasitic relationship. It could get much worse though. Nature has a tentendency to evolve strong defences against parasites - and the more deadly the parasite, the stronger the defence becomes. Do you really want to see what happens when cattle, pigs and chickens start evolving defences against us ? Are you 100% certain you can prevent that ? Bet your species on it certain ?
Antiobiotics ? Great invention - saved untold lives. And now it's giving us superbugs which have the potential to kill far more people than the antibiotics ever saved. The tech served a great purpose but overuse is turning it into perhaps the single shortest term risk to the survival of the species we face.
Automobiles ? Have led to urban sprawl - which causes a whole slew of problems, made wars far more deadly and fronts much bigger, is currently one of the biggest driving forces behind our second most urgent existential threat. I'd say we haven't begun to see the full downsides of that one - and the electric car only addresses one aspect. We're still just beginning to understand how the car already changed our entire human experience - you can't say something is better or worse before you understand what it entails. For example - the car offered a previously non-existent level of comfort and privacy - and as a result a significant percentage of the next generation was conceived on the back seat of model-T's. Henry Ford, without meaning to, probably did just as much to start the sexual revolution as the pill did. The combination of both has changed the shape of society for ever. While, overall, I think that change has been for the good - we're still dealing with the fallout of the major backlash against that change, which is a problem the scale of which we haven't come close to enumerating. It also removed horses from our daily lives. The removal of a major symbiotic animal from daily contact is a massive and radical change with unimagninable consequences which we simply don't know yet. To give an example of what it COULD mean. Europeans gained their high degree of resistance to smallpox from living with cows. It was a cow virus initially, we got it from them - and over centuries developed a strong immune response so by the time of the explorers we mostly survived it. It got to the Americas and killed 95% of the entire population there, because they had no prior exposure and so, no resistance because they didn't keep cattle. Who knows what disease could arrive in a few decades or centuries because we took horses out of our lives - what may show up and kill 95% of us as a result ?
Now this post seems extremely pessimistic, I'm not really such a pessimist - I don't think all these scenarios will happen and a lot of smart people are actively working to try and avoid them as far as possible. We may avoid them all. But you are so excessively optimistic in your view that just giving some examples of what you are overlooking inevitably sounds pessimistic.
Everything has upsides and downsides. Plastics are probably the only reason we h
All wars are beneficial for (at least some) financial elites. Wars that would genuinely hurt the elites don't happen. Elites always have way too much influence in politics for a war to happen that would not, in some way, make them richer.
Consider this - if the labour market was actually a *free* market then the supply for any job would be inversely proportional to how pleasant the job is - and sewage workers would be the best paid people in the country - because nobody would wade through shit every day for less than a billionaire's lifestyle at night.
>Until very recently, homosexuality effectively removed your genes from the pool,
Nope. Never been true. Gay people have been having kids since time immemorial. Most of them married somebody of the opposite sex as part of their cover after all. Not to mention the best scientific evidence we have suggests that homosexuality is transfered epigenitically - which means you don't need a gay gene to have gay offspring. The fact that homosexuality has been observed in over 3000 species and is now believed to exist in pretty much all sexual species - proves it *must* have an evolutionary survival advantage for the species, it simply cannot be that common (including across kingdoms with no common ancestor for a billion years) unless it's a universally good thing to have in a species which evolves again and again.
That's because you idiotically conflate sex and gender as if they are 1) the same thing 2) in any way related to each other.
Neither of those suppositions have any scientific truth to them whatsoever.
For starters: 1) Western culture is utterly unique in history by having only two genders. Every other culture that ever existed (and the ones still existing today) there is three or more 2) Humans come in at at least 12 sexes - these includes visible hermaphrodites (of several kinds) but the vast majority of whom are utterly indistinguishable from "male" or "female" because none of the differences are external. Sex is determined by chromosomes. XX is female, XY is male. But those are not the only ones out there. XXY is extremely common - and physically indistinguishable from female - but tend to have higher average testosterone levels - several olympic gold medalists have been XXY and the olympic committee banned XXY women from competing until the 1990s unless they also suffered from another condition that prevented the absorbtion of testosterone (see now there is yet another mechanism - even if you have male or female hormons of the right amounts many people are born unable to absorb those hormones properly).
The simple idea of 'male' and 'female' is so far removed from the exponential complexity of real life as to be laughable. In real life -there are almost as many sexes as there are organisms, and the square of that in genders.
>I'd otherwise agree except, as GP stated, this isn't medically necessary and is purely cosmetic. I'm sorry but the overwhelming scientific consensus is that it is, in fact, medically necessary and, indeed, lifesaving. Untreated gender dysphoria is known to cause suicidal depression on an unmatched scale - transgender people have a successful suicide rate (which is far lower than the attempt rate) 4 times higher than the national average in every demographic. That's clear evidence of a medical need.
Yes, your brain is an organ and it's chemistry is a biological function and problem there - such a gender dysphoria or whatever name it will have next is a legitimate medical need. Sure this science if young - the name of the condition and the theories about causes and how it actually happens have been effectively rewritten from the ground up 4 times in 20 years. That changes nothing. At this moment, at this time - doctors need to act according to the best science available, and the right of prisoners to medical care should be allocated on the same basis.
> This would be like saying you should have the right to orthodontic care, tummy tucks, facelifts, liposuction, etc. False equivalence fallacy on every count. Firstly those operations are not based on a recognized medical condition, unlike what we are talking about (*your* personal failure to recognise it does not make it any less recognised). Secondly those operations are in no way similar to gender reassignment surgery and you're just proving your ignorance of what it entails. Those operations are mostly outpatient procedures, even the most risky of them are a couple of hours under. Gender reassignment on the other hand can have several years of prepwork before the surgery even starts, usually requires numerous surgeries for each bit that's changed and the surgical part of the process takes several years as well to complete - with massive risks. It's not something anybody chooses for vanity, it's just too massive an undertaking for anybody to do on a whim. It's a situation that nobody would subject themselves to unless they were seriously in need. The suggestion that it's similar to a tummy tuck is ignorant in the extreme.
>but because they just don't want to. Yes, this is true. You are wrong however about whose argument it proves - it disproves your argument. It proves just how severe a decision it is - and the only trans people who do it are the ones whose need is so great that they cannot live without it. Every trans person who can avoid it, does avoid it.
If the letter of the law can be grounds for being imprisoned it must also be grounds for release. Legally speaking - America refrained from going to war, so treason was not legally possible. America has had a habit ever since the end of world war 2 of fighting wars without declaring them. It started during the cold war when, arguably, there was some good reason for it - declaring those wars could have led to a direct confrontration with the Soviet Union which neither side wanted. Using proxy wars without declarations were a diplomatic ploy to avoid that risk. But that hasn't been a factor since 1991. Since then though, presidents have figured out that it is also a good way to significantly reduce the constitutional and congressional barriers you need to actually use the military. There are some pretty tight restrictions on when America is allowed to declare war -and almost none of the wars since 1991 would meet those obligations - so the loophole they found is to fight them without actually declaring them. The only actually legitimate American military action post-1991 was in Bosnia, where they were invited - as part of a genuine international alliance (indeed the French Foreign Legion actually saw more combat in that one than any US troops did) and once the dictator was removed left - and let the world cooperate to reconstruct the nation. But then - American companies did not get a lot of juicy construction contracts out of that one - and we can't have *that* now can we ?
>1. Loyalty to country / oath = precisely not ignoring illegal actions. Yes. This. Besides which I would go further and quote Oscar Wilde: Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious. He was right too. Loving a country is simply an insane idea which is pushed only by those who want to engage in, or get others to engage in, or get others to cover up vicious behavior. It's merely a contemporary form of good old fashion tribalism. Love individuals who act good. A country - that's just an attempt to establish an artificially defined tribe of barbarian raiders.
>2. Doesn't really matter what her initial motivation was - she could have done it because she was a dirty racist who didn't like the President's color, for all I care. Maybe, but this happened under Bush so that's not likely to be the cause. The leaks Manning got arrested for were related to the early days of the Iraq war - and what was in those leaks were truly horrifying abuses of power and simple slaughter of unarmed civilians.
>2. Give evidence that she did it "deliberately, willfully to hurt [her] nation" please. Some people consider anything but blind loyalty to fit into that category. "My country right or wrong" types can't ever conceive of a justified reason to hurt your country - like say to stop it from hurting innocent civilians so much. Truth be told - there are almost no reasons for hurting ones country which are not fully justified. Hurting innocent people - that is never justified. Hurting the government on the other hand can hardly ever fail to be an act of moral good. The same goes for powerful corporations or, indeed, anybody who gets to make decisions that powerless people suffer over.
>I'm sure that was a lovely explanation of how you'd like things to work, but unfortunately it's totally divorced from reality
Except that I just showed you a real life example, i.e. reality - from just months ago, proving what I'm saying.
>There is no effective mechanism through which the people can control or remove a European Commissioner who is incompetent, directly or indirectly. There is no way whatsoever for the people of South Africa to remove or control the minister of finance - yet they were able to get one removed. Vote for different politicians - who will appoint different commisioners.
>The people are so far removed from the individual Commissioners, there are so many levels of appointed or indirectly elected power in between, that there is no meaningful democratic mandate or oversight at all. Ultimately, the commision may decide economic policy but it's the politicians who decide the nature of the policies. Who appoint commisioners that share their views about what kind of policies are good or bad. If you don't like the policies the commisioners are pushing - vote for different EMPs. They will fire a bunch of commisioners and appoint others - from the top down, simply to get commisioners who share their views about how the economy should be structured. You want people with the expertise in implementation on the commision - but ultimately it's the politicians who choose what they implement and who will appoint commisioners that share their views on that.
>It might as well be a dictatorship for all the difference that would make to accountability or control by the people the EU administration is supposed to represent. How did Europe forget, so soon, what dictatorship is - that you can use the phrase so lightly. The idea that you can have a dictatorship about so narrow a thing as just the economy is ridiculous. Quite recently much of Europe was ruled by dictators who controlled literally every aspect of your lives, every second from birth to death dictated - including choosing the time of death. Who plunged Europe into the biggest wars the world has ever known - not once but twice in 20 years ! Some of them lasted very long - Franco of Spain remained in power until the 1980s ! Right now - Europe over-all is perhaps among the most free societies on earth. The libertarian nutjobs won't think so because they think labour laws are oppresion but sane people realize that the very things they decry as oppressive are, in fact, the very things that make the majority of people free. That give them any freedom at all. To have freedom you need protection - not just from government but from all wielders of power - including economic power. You need regulations on the rich - or they will be the ONLY free people. Indeed, I would go so far as to say, that the less free the market - the more free the citizens.
There is an upper limit to the average level of education a society can have. No society is devoid of stupid people - and they bring the average down. You can't deny them the vote - we've tried that in various ways for centuries, it was always a disaster. So THAT is the reality we have to live with. Sometimes the best decisions will simply not be popular - and it could take years before people experience why they were the best decisions.
It's the same reason the US doesn't elect the judges on the supreme court - you can't have the people who are charged with keeping government in check being subjected to the same incentives as government. You can't have the people who are charged with defending everybody's rights be subject to a vote - that automatically leads to them only protecting majority rights - because that wins elections.
Democracy without checks and balances is just a dictatorship of the majority. That's the first problem. The second problem is that an election is a terrible way to ascertain ability. It's a great way to choose who gets to govern - because government works best when it's held in check by the consent of the governed, but it's a terrible way to appoint people to technical jobs. That's why nowhere on earth is that how it works. People appoint the government - but the actual work gets done by people who are interviewed and selected based on CV's. Hell even in the parts of the US that's not supposed to work that way it's how it actually works. The director of a federal agency is generally little more than a figurehead. They are political appointments, and they pretty much only do P.R. the job of actually managing a federal agency is done by the deputy directory - who is not appointed politically, typically got there by working his way up from the bottom, has years or decades of experience in that agency and actually knows how the place works. The director of an agency like the CIA or the Treasury works for 8 years at most, every president replaces all of them with his own picks. You simply CANNOT have them actually be in charge. They may only be there 4 years - they come in with no idea how anything works - it would take a year just to get them trained up enough to understand the operations - then 3 years with a leader with no experience. The two term presidents may have some guys who are marginally competent in their 8th year and just as they get good at the job they get fired. On paper, they are in charge - in reality, just about the extent of their "in chargeness" is that they are the ones who get blamed for scandals so they have an incentive to tell the deputy to make sure there aren't any.
Frankly - if more *companies* were still run by people who had field experience doing what the company does - the business world would be a much better place. If only boards of directors had figured out what the government has - the CEO is a figurehead, the department heads who were *promoted* (not hired from another company) are the only ones who understand the business well enough to actually make good decisions.
There is a point where democracy comes into play - but it's not in directly appointing the people charged with overseeing the economy - it's in holding to account the government that does appoint them. If the experts are bad - then punish the politicians until they fire them and replace them.
Exactly that happened in South Africa in December. The president fired the minister of finance (ministers are appointed by the president - not elected and are meant to be experts in their portfolio) abruptly and replaced her with another, completely unknown person. He didn't really like the former minister of finance because she was actually doing her job well and not letting him loot the treasury at will so he was trying to replace her with one who will not stand in the way of his corruption.
The population was outraged, there were protests, the rand fell to it's lowest level ever as the markets panicked and the stock market took a massive dip. Within a week he was forced to fire his new minister of finance. The previous one, however, had already found other work and wouldn't take the job. So he was forced to reappoint the one before her - who is well respected and did a good job while he was there the first time.
That's where the democracy is. In holding the politicians to account. It is a GOOD thing that the minister of finance is NOT elected, it means he can do things that the party doesn't like, that are not the most popular policies (those are not always the best ones), and importantly - things the president doesn't like. Sure the president can fire him - but if he does so willy nilly he has to answer to the voters, who have shown that they can and will force him to appoint competent people.
The stunt cost him dearly. In August we held local government elections and it was the worst election the ruling party has had since the advent of full democracy in 1994. Their over-all vote level fell to 53% - it's never been below 60% in any election before - and the lost governorship of the most important metros in the country. They lost Cape Town back in 2006 and the province in 2009. But until now there was only one other town in the country they didn't rule at the mayoral level. But now they also lost Nelson Mandela Bay metro (which must sting) - the most important industrial harbour, they lost Johannesburg (the economic heartland of the country - that's like the ruling party in England losing London), they lost Pretoria - the capital (meaning that parliament now sits with a majority party in a city where they don't govern) and they lost Ekurhuleni (where the biggest manufacturing industries are). Basically - it was a massive blow, and they look set to be seriously hurt in the next national elections. I don't think they'll lose power yet, but they will have a LOT less of it.
When the wrong people are appointed to expert positions - that's not undemocratic because the people doing the appointing are still accountable to the voters, it's them you have to punish.
If Europe's voters are not outraged enough that the politicians who appoint the commission are worried about the risks of not replacing them with more competent people - then they can't be *that* incompetent.
Everything you just said is an example of a pure economic policy decisions which fall under the umbrella of 'should be done by appointed experts who don't have to fear doing unpopular things'. This is the kind of stuff where democracy would be a terrible idea. No personally I am not a fan of what their policy's are, but the whole idea is to be able to have policies that are unpopular because *every* economic policy is unpopular with some people. Interestingly the left hates the EU's economic policies for not being liberal enough - while the right hates them for not being conservative enough. The left complains about insufficient regulation, the right about too much... so maybe they are actually finding good middle ground... well except for the absolutely insane compulsion to keep trying austerity despite the fact that in all of history it has never ever achieved anything except to make whatever economic problems were used as an excuse to implement it get much worse. The only way out of a recession is to spend - a lot. Austerity turns a recession into a depression, and will keep that depression going indefinitely unless government starts to spend. Just as it did when the great depression hit - it didn't end until world war 2 finally forced the US government to actually start spending and stop with the austerity bullshit. No. Spending in a recession cannot cause hyperinflation. It can't even cause inflation. It's mathematically impossible for increasing the money supply during a recession to cause inflation because by definition a recession is a shortage of liquidity - it happens because there's too little money in the system. No the Weimar republic does not prove others. No neither does Zimbabwe and neither does Nero's Rome. Those are always the examples cited because they are the only ones available and it conveniently ignores what *else* was going on - Rome had been sacked twice in 20 years and then had a plague, the Weimar republic had just lost the second biggest war of all time and Zimbabwe had a complete social collapse. In no example, ever, did printing money during a recession cause hyperinflation unless there was another - unrelated - example first which destroyed the country's entire productive capacity. Printing money when nothing is being produced to buy with it - that will cause hyperinflation, printing money in a country that *could* produce if only there was somebody who could buy - that does not cause inflation - all it does is prevent the hyperdeflation that turns recessions into depressions.
Sorry, I digressed. Anyway there is one exception to the list you gave, the speech about an EU military. That would not fall under economic policy, but on the other hand the person who made that speech has no power to act on it. All he did was share an opinion - only the parliament could actually create a European military if they believed it was a good idea. In the near future - it may actually become a good idea. See Trump has said some things that have made NATO allies very nervous and suggested that NATO would be hugely weakened and deprived of most of it's US support if he were to be elected. In such a scenario, the defence pact that Europe has relied on to keep itself safe may very well no longer be reliable. Then the EU may indeed want a European Military supported by their various national military forces to take the place of NATO without the US.
Now that's an unlikely scenario, Trump almost certainly can't win the election anymore and even if he did it's highly unlikely he could actually get such a policy past congress - but it's no longer an unthinkable one. So thinking about it is not a bad thing and there's no reason you can't think about it, and give speeches about your thoughts, just because you're not part of the government that would have to make the decision. The members of the commision has just as much right to try and convince parliament of their views as you do, they are citizens as well after all.
All of which I agree with. None of which changes that the common legal standard for permission is "legally consented to publication' and that guardians can consent to such things for minors. The entire babyproducts industry bases all of it's marketing on photos of nude babies. All of which requires parental consent - since the models are too young to legally sign a contract. And this case is effectively challenging the basis of all that (and a whole host of other things). That it happens to also touch on issues of bodily autonomy for a young adults complicates matters. Generally I believe the law should favour bodily autonomy concerns as a fundamental right - but this is a grey area.
I raise my (2 year old) child in a very liberated manner. She was born biologically female but if she were to identify as male when she's older - I would respect that. I teach her that there is nothing shameful about the human body and both her parents are often nude around her and vice versa. I also teach her about consent even now - that you cannot touch anybody's private parts unless you ask permission and they say yes, and nobody should be allowed to touch hers unless they asked and she said yes. The only exception I make to that is bathing her - when the occasional screaming fest is ignored because frankly a two year old is not capable of making the decision not to be clean (and the resulting health risks) on her own. Even then I always tell her it's time to get cleaned because even though the action is utterly not sexual in nature - it involves contact with private parts.
This is how I raise her. I believe in the idea that it's her body - and her wishes about it trumps everybody else's - including my own. So no, I'll never threaten her boyfriends or discourage her sexuality. I will make sure she knows about safe sex and then trust her to make the decisions about it that's right for her, I have no right to tell her what choices to make. Whether she wants to die a virgin or become a prostitute is HER choice, not mine.
So that's where my sympathies lie. Nonetheless there is a matter of what is legal versus what is moral here. And the father had legal consent - which a court is unlikely to mess with because, many years later, the former minor wants to revoke it. I really do hope the judge pushes for a settlement - because there is no good ruling in this case. Rule against the parents - and you risk the careers of a thousand young performances, every kid who ever wanted to do sports, hell every driver's ed class ! Rule against the girl - and you place serious harm on the issue of bodily autonomy, privacy and dignity - a finding I would rather not have happen, no matter the other circumstances.
That said - the odds are really against her. Americans DO have a constitutional right to freedom of speech, they do not have a constitutional right to dignity as we here in South Africa and most European countries have. The court will, if it comes down to it, be forced to favour the constitutional right over the non-constitutional one.
Yep, I never suggested he was particularly unique for that. Just that this is, indeed, who he was.
Generally - the people who actually create things are almost never the people who get rich from them. That's at least in part because those people care about creating something great, not about getting rich. It's practically a job requirement - you can't care about the greatness of the creation AND about the profitability of the company since the two goals will create vastly conflicting requirements.
Except that you are now conflating two unrelated meanings of the word 'consent'. The meaning as used in sexual laws refers to consent to sexual behaviour, but I was using it's meaning in contract law which is very different. That there is some overlap in the area of statutory rape is an aside.
When a minor wants to enter a contract (technically - as simple as buying a candybar from the local tuckshop) their legal guardian (usually a parent) must consent to them signing that contract. That's a different usage of consent. And then there is yet a third meaning of consent in contract law, which is of the 'I consent to you using something that belongs to me in a certain way' (possibly with an 'in return for' clause). This type of consent is present in everything from a rental contract to the 'release' contracts signed by reality TV contestent, rental contracts have them, copyright license contracts fall under them.
All three meanings are closely related but have subtle (yet important) differences and this involves both the latter two but NOT the former one. These are not sexual photos nor sexual behaviours - so sexual consent has nothing to do with it. The small overlap with bodily autonomy as a concept only comes from her being the subject of the photos. But a photographer wanting to publish a photo of another person needs would generally need their consent or a strong public interest case. The famous Vietnam Girl photo for example didn't need a model release because of it's extreme public interest value as a news photo.
In this case there is clearly no public interest at play. She's a private citizen, not involved in any event of major public significance (like a war) or running for a political office. So the photographer would need consent of the person or, if it's a minor, from their legal guardian. But this is consent of the third meaning. An allowance to use something that belongs to me. But the photographer in this case IS the legal guardian and COULD give that consent to himself.
The father has a strong case that he hasn't broken any laws. I think he is acting immorally by not honoring her wishes and personally if a model asked me to stop publishing a photo, especially a nude, I would take it down - even though I have her signed consent at the time (I never shoot without it). But I'm not legally obligated to do so - I just feel a personal moral obligation. I think the father here ought to feel the same - but that's not a legal argument.
Legally - he has a strong defence against the claim that the legal guardian of the subject of the photos consented to their publication and she cannot now as an adult revoke that contractual consent. Who the judge will side with is hard to predict because she's clearly morally in the right but her father seems to be strongly in his legal rights. Hence my prediction that the judge will push very hard to get them to settle.
Being legally an adult means you the law treats you as one - among other things, this means you get to use the courts to settle grievances when other methods have failed. You don't get to call her legally and adult but immature for using a legal mechanism created for adults to settle disputes with.
Immature ways of settling disputes exists too - and sometimes adults use them too, the include punching somebody in the face and that - like almost all the others actually - is, actually a crime. Or vandalising their property. Also a crime.
There are only two legal ways for adults to settle a dispute: either they privately agree to a solution, or they go to court and state their case and the judge imposes one on them. That's it. An out of court settlement is really just a reversal to the private-agreement after a legal case has commenced. It adds some formalities to the process but does not change it's nature.
>and if that is the criteria then we should lock everyone in a dark room and hope no one gets aroused by being in dark enclosed spaces.
Faint hope. There's an actual fetish for that. It's called mummification, a subset of bondage, there is another fetish for sensory deprivation - and they do come combined.
Honestly, I sincerely doubt a judge will ever rule on this. As I pointed out above - this case raises serious issues around contract law as it pertains to minors and legal guardians. That's a problem a smart judge would really try to avoid - because there is serious risk for the judge's career. Rule in her favour - you can expect a slew of cases using it as precedent for much less sympathetic causes - which in turn will lead to years of appeals and probably his ruling being struck down along the way by higher courts. No judge likes that. If he rules against her - he risk a major public outcry - notably from women's rights groups and politicians, which is also something no smart judge wants.
So I think the judge is likely to do all in his/her power to get them to settle the case - and judges have quite a bit of power to try and encourage settlements (with good reason). Indeed a judge can actually ORDER the claimants to settle the case and refuse to issue a ruling when the judge believes a settlement is the best outcome and reasonably possible - and if I were the judge (note - not a judge or a lawyer) that is exactly what I would do: order them to settle the case. That works out well - the only likely settlement involves the pictures being taken down - likely without any money changing hands. That satisfies her wish to get them down and removes the risk that the judge will rule that, as her legal guardians at the time her parents had the right to consent on her behalf to publication and she cannot retroactively remove consent. It spares her parents an expensive payout and further public embarassment over being sued by their kid and it saves the judge from a very thorny issue.
If this actually goes to trial - expect her parents to receive a nice big anonymous donation to pay for their defence. You don't seriously expect Huggies(tm) to risk all the babies whose buttocks they printed on packaging for the past 50 years to start suing them for damages because as adults they don't consent do you ?
Actually the evidence suggests this is much rarer than generally believe and almost all of them target members of their own family. Stranger danger is almost entirely a myth.
>and the number of registered sex offenders climbs every year.
Except that there are two problems with your analysis. Firstly - nobody ever gets removed, so the list will always grow even as people die out. Secondly it lists anybody who was ever convicted of any sex-related offence. There are lots of girls on it who got there because they sexted their boyfriend at age 15 which some trumped up prosecutor turned into 'distributing child pornography' . There are tons of people on there who got a public lewdness or indecent exposure conviction for getting caught pissing on a tree one night after too many beers. Quite a few people got on there on a statutory rape charge for having consensual sex with their childhood sweetheart - often sex that was legal the week before (think 17 year old guy, 16 year old girl - they are covered by a Romeo and Juliet law, he has his birthday and turns 18...suddenly he's a "rapist"). A huge number of people on that list are no threat to society at all in fact - and since there's no appeals process there is no way to get off it. Now, of course, a lot of sex offenders are violent asaulters, rapists, date rapists etc. I'm not trying to minimize their crimes - but the wide range of things that can get you put on the list *does* minimise their crimes and certainly makes the sex offender registry useless for actually assessing whether a person is a threat. Too many people on that registry are harmless, and that means you either assume they all are - or you do what most people do an assume they are all as bad as the worst ones. Either way - it ends up being a travesty of justice and the registry does not support your point at all, it's growth rate even less so.
>Embarrassing your daughter in such a way is heinous, in my mind, Now this, you are right about, and you don't need the previous hyperbole to be right about it.
>Does this woman own her privacy, her nudity, and embodiment of self She damn well ought to yes. What makes the case legally tricky is that when the photos were taken she was a minor and the photographer was also her legal guardian - who had the right to give consent for them to be taken and published on her behalf. The question legally, is whether as an adult now, she can revoke the consent they gave when she was a minor. That's something a judge will rule on. My gut feel is she should be able to but that gets very tricky legally. What about child models who, as adults, want the ads their baby pix were in pulled ? Would they be able to do revoke the consent papers their parents signed 20 years ago ?
>Whatever is ruled has no effect legally in the USA Actually it does - rulings set precedent, which has the power of law until and unless a law is passed. That's one form of how common-law works.
>But many women will be watching the outcome, and for good reason. While I can see that, I'm not sure it's the right case to be watching. There are plenty of real problems with pictures, especially nude ones, published without consent. Revenge-porn cases and the like - which are clear violations of a person's bodily integrity. That's why real photographers have model release contracts - and don't publish photos without proof of consent. But this one is difficult because there *was* consent. As a minor her parents had the right to consent on her behalf. As I said above - the legal test here is whether she, as an adult, can revoke consent her parents gave (in this case to themselves but that is immaterial) when she was a minor ? I'm pretty sure *that* is legally untested as an idea. Generally though you can't worm your way out of a contract your parents signed on your behalf as a minor when you're an adult by claiming you don't consent to the contract. If that changes - then nobody will want to sign any cont
Where's the relevance here ? The two cases literally have nothing in common. The first is a criminal case. The second a civil case. That is: completely different standards of evidence and procedures. The first is in federal court under federal law. The second is in California state court under California state laws.
The only thing the two cases have in common is they involve somebody impersonating somebody else - that is not ipso facto a crime or a cause for civil action. If it was the entire cast of Saturday Night Live would be in jail or getting sued every week.
This particular case violated California state laws since 1) the impersonation caused actual harm 2) It falls under California's law against deceptive business practises.
Are you sure it's a step ABOVE ? I think it's actually a step BELOW.
With that one, chances are it would get spam flagged and forgotten, with the one he DID send it got traced and he is now being sued. Arguably a worse outcome.
Jobs never built a thing in his life. He just got really, really good at a certain kind of marketing - no not marketing to the public (he had people for that) - marketing himself to engineers and designers as a visionary boss who will let you create great things. Which put him in a position to get rich off of other people's groundbreaking work - with never a reward for those who did the breaking of the ground. That pattern goes all the way back to when he first met his 'friend' Steve Wozniak. Woz at least recognised the contributions of Apple's other engineers to the outcomes - which is why he gave a crapload of his Apple shares (then worth a great deal of money) away to other apple staff before he left the company. It wasn't that Jobs was greedy and Woz was generous (though that's true) - it's that Woz, an engineer of the first order, understood teamwork and team effort, while Jobs - a classic psychopath only ever saw other people as useful tools for enriching himself. Looking at the same thing - Woz saw a group of people who created something awesome with him. Jobs saw a bunch of people he could rob.
Slashdot Mirror
>You must know that here is no obligation (moral or otherwise) to fix other people's problems
Oh yes there is. The failure to recognize it is antisocial or even psychotic behaviour. That's literally the purpose for which society was invented. Indeed, it's literally the reason why we evolved as a social species. If you don't accept your share of "fixing other people's problems" as a responsibility - then you are not fit for purpose as a member of society. The only reason for tolerating your existence, indeed for saying you have a 'right to live' - the only reason NOT to murder you for your stuff, is the potential good you can do.
"Good" is just a word meaning "effort spent solving other people's problems".
Call that the biological obligation. But it not a moral obligation - it is THE moral obligation, the ONLY moral obligation. It's literally the definition of all sane morality.
None of your examples come without major downsides - and in some cases the prices are not yet fully known. Modern farming techniques come at the price of the greatest cruelty in the history of animal domestication. Animal domestication used to be a symbiotic relationship - which animals and humans alike chose because it was mutually beneficial. Even the cows we ate were okay with it because the species as a whole prospered and before we ate them they got a quality of life far beyond what they could otherwise achieve - the lions were not offering a good life before eating them.
Today - the way factory farms operate, humans are no longer symbiotes with domesticated animals, we are flat out parasites now, and this is a very different thing. I would argue that, by itself this is a massive downside. And one we're not making any real effort to change. Personally, I've switched to only veal for my meat - I won't eat factory farmed meat because my conscious will not allow me to participate in a parasitic relationship. It could get much worse though. Nature has a tentendency to evolve strong defences against parasites - and the more deadly the parasite, the stronger the defence becomes. Do you really want to see what happens when cattle, pigs and chickens start evolving defences against us ? Are you 100% certain you can prevent that ? Bet your species on it certain ?
Antiobiotics ? Great invention - saved untold lives. And now it's giving us superbugs which have the potential to kill far more people than the antibiotics ever saved. The tech served a great purpose but overuse is turning it into perhaps the single shortest term risk to the survival of the species we face.
Automobiles ? Have led to urban sprawl - which causes a whole slew of problems, made wars far more deadly and fronts much bigger, is currently one of the biggest driving forces behind our second most urgent existential threat. I'd say we haven't begun to see the full downsides of that one - and the electric car only addresses one aspect. We're still just beginning to understand how the car already changed our entire human experience - you can't say something is better or worse before you understand what it entails. For example - the car offered a previously non-existent level of comfort and privacy - and as a result a significant percentage of the next generation was conceived on the back seat of model-T's. Henry Ford, without meaning to, probably did just as much to start the sexual revolution as the pill did. The combination of both has changed the shape of society for ever. While, overall, I think that change has been for the good - we're still dealing with the fallout of the major backlash against that change, which is a problem the scale of which we haven't come close to enumerating. It also removed horses from our daily lives. The removal of a major symbiotic animal from daily contact is a massive and radical change with unimagninable consequences which we simply don't know yet. To give an example of what it COULD mean. Europeans gained their high degree of resistance to smallpox from living with cows. It was a cow virus initially, we got it from them - and over centuries developed a strong immune response so by the time of the explorers we mostly survived it. It got to the Americas and killed 95% of the entire population there, because they had no prior exposure and so, no resistance because they didn't keep cattle.
Who knows what disease could arrive in a few decades or centuries because we took horses out of our lives - what may show up and kill 95% of us as a result ?
Now this post seems extremely pessimistic, I'm not really such a pessimist - I don't think all these scenarios will happen and a lot of smart people are actively working to try and avoid them as far as possible. We may avoid them all. But you are so excessively optimistic in your view that just giving some examples of what you are overlooking inevitably sounds pessimistic.
Everything has upsides and downsides. Plastics are probably the only reason we h
All wars are beneficial for (at least some) financial elites. Wars that would genuinely hurt the elites don't happen. Elites always have way too much influence in politics for a war to happen that would not, in some way, make them richer.
Consider this - if the labour market was actually a *free* market then the supply for any job would be inversely proportional to how pleasant the job is - and sewage workers would be the best paid people in the country - because nobody would wade through shit every day for less than a billionaire's lifestyle at night.
It's called the American dream because it has never, ever been reality.
>Until very recently, homosexuality effectively removed your genes from the pool,
Nope. Never been true. Gay people have been having kids since time immemorial. Most of them married somebody of the opposite sex as part of their cover after all. Not to mention the best scientific evidence we have suggests that homosexuality is transfered epigenitically - which means you don't need a gay gene to have gay offspring. The fact that homosexuality has been observed in over 3000 species and is now believed to exist in pretty much all sexual species - proves it *must* have an evolutionary survival advantage for the species, it simply cannot be that common (including across kingdoms with no common ancestor for a billion years) unless it's a universally good thing to have in a species which evolves again and again.
That's because you idiotically conflate sex and gender as if they are
1) the same thing
2) in any way related to each other.
Neither of those suppositions have any scientific truth to them whatsoever.
For starters:
1) Western culture is utterly unique in history by having only two genders. Every other culture that ever existed (and the ones still existing today) there is three or more
2) Humans come in at at least 12 sexes - these includes visible hermaphrodites (of several kinds) but the vast majority of whom are utterly indistinguishable from "male" or "female" because none of the differences are external. Sex is determined by chromosomes. XX is female, XY is male. But those are not the only ones out there. XXY is extremely common - and physically indistinguishable from female - but tend to have higher average testosterone levels - several olympic gold medalists have been XXY and the olympic committee banned XXY women from competing until the 1990s unless they also suffered from another condition that prevented the absorbtion of testosterone (see now there is yet another mechanism - even if you have male or female hormons of the right amounts many people are born unable to absorb those hormones properly).
The simple idea of 'male' and 'female' is so far removed from the exponential complexity of real life as to be laughable. In real life -there are almost as many sexes as there are organisms, and the square of that in genders.
>I'd otherwise agree except, as GP stated, this isn't medically necessary and is purely cosmetic.
I'm sorry but the overwhelming scientific consensus is that it is, in fact, medically necessary and, indeed, lifesaving. Untreated gender dysphoria is known to cause suicidal depression on an unmatched scale - transgender people have a successful suicide rate (which is far lower than the attempt rate) 4 times higher than the national average in every demographic. That's clear evidence of a medical need.
Yes, your brain is an organ and it's chemistry is a biological function and problem there - such a gender dysphoria or whatever name it will have next is a legitimate medical need. Sure this science if young - the name of the condition and the theories about causes and how it actually happens have been effectively rewritten from the ground up 4 times in 20 years. That changes nothing. At this moment, at this time - doctors need to act according to the best science available, and the right of prisoners to medical care should be allocated on the same basis.
> This would be like saying you should have the right to orthodontic care, tummy tucks, facelifts, liposuction, etc.
False equivalence fallacy on every count. Firstly those operations are not based on a recognized medical condition, unlike what we are talking about (*your* personal failure to recognise it does not make it any less recognised). Secondly those operations are in no way similar to gender reassignment surgery and you're just proving your ignorance of what it entails. Those operations are mostly outpatient procedures, even the most risky of them are a couple of hours under. Gender reassignment on the other hand can have several years of prepwork before the surgery even starts, usually requires numerous surgeries for each bit that's changed and the surgical part of the process takes several years as well to complete - with massive risks. It's not something anybody chooses for vanity, it's just too massive an undertaking for anybody to do on a whim. It's a situation that nobody would subject themselves to unless they were seriously in need. The suggestion that it's similar to a tummy tuck is ignorant in the extreme.
>but because they just don't want to.
Yes, this is true. You are wrong however about whose argument it proves - it disproves your argument. It proves just how severe a decision it is - and the only trans people who do it are the ones whose need is so great that they cannot live without it. Every trans person who can avoid it, does avoid it.
If the letter of the law can be grounds for being imprisoned it must also be grounds for release. Legally speaking - America refrained from going to war, so treason was not legally possible.
America has had a habit ever since the end of world war 2 of fighting wars without declaring them. It started during the cold war when, arguably, there was some good reason for it - declaring those wars could have led to a direct confrontration with the Soviet Union which neither side wanted. Using proxy wars without declarations were a diplomatic ploy to avoid that risk.
But that hasn't been a factor since 1991. Since then though, presidents have figured out that it is also a good way to significantly reduce the constitutional and congressional barriers you need to actually use the military. There are some pretty tight restrictions on when America is allowed to declare war -and almost none of the wars since 1991 would meet those obligations - so the loophole they found is to fight them without actually declaring them. The only actually legitimate American military action post-1991 was in Bosnia, where they were invited - as part of a genuine international alliance (indeed the French Foreign Legion actually saw more combat in that one than any US troops did) and once the dictator was removed left - and let the world cooperate to reconstruct the nation. But then - American companies did not get a lot of juicy construction contracts out of that one - and we can't have *that* now can we ?
>1. Loyalty to country / oath = precisely not ignoring illegal actions.
Yes. This. Besides which I would go further and quote Oscar Wilde: Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.
He was right too. Loving a country is simply an insane idea which is pushed only by those who want to engage in, or get others to engage in, or get others to cover up vicious behavior. It's merely a contemporary form of good old fashion tribalism. Love individuals who act good. A country - that's just an attempt to establish an artificially defined tribe of barbarian raiders.
>2. Doesn't really matter what her initial motivation was - she could have done it because she was a dirty racist who didn't like the President's color, for all I care.
Maybe, but this happened under Bush so that's not likely to be the cause. The leaks Manning got arrested for were related to the early days of the Iraq war - and what was in those leaks were truly horrifying abuses of power and simple slaughter of unarmed civilians.
>2. Give evidence that she did it "deliberately, willfully to hurt [her] nation" please.
Some people consider anything but blind loyalty to fit into that category. "My country right or wrong" types can't ever conceive of a justified reason to hurt your country - like say to stop it from hurting innocent civilians so much. Truth be told - there are almost no reasons for hurting ones country which are not fully justified. Hurting innocent people - that is never justified. Hurting the government on the other hand can hardly ever fail to be an act of moral good. The same goes for powerful corporations or, indeed, anybody who gets to make decisions that powerless people suffer over.
>I'm sure that was a lovely explanation of how you'd like things to work, but unfortunately it's totally divorced from reality
Except that I just showed you a real life example, i.e. reality - from just months ago, proving what I'm saying.
>There is no effective mechanism through which the people can control or remove a European Commissioner who is incompetent, directly or indirectly.
There is no way whatsoever for the people of South Africa to remove or control the minister of finance - yet they were able to get one removed. Vote for different politicians - who will appoint different commisioners.
>The people are so far removed from the individual Commissioners, there are so many levels of appointed or indirectly elected power in between, that there is no meaningful democratic mandate or oversight at all.
Ultimately, the commision may decide economic policy but it's the politicians who decide the nature of the policies. Who appoint commisioners that share their views about what kind of policies are good or bad. If you don't like the policies the commisioners are pushing - vote for different EMPs. They will fire a bunch of commisioners and appoint others - from the top down, simply to get commisioners who share their views about how the economy should be structured. You want people with the expertise in implementation on the commision - but ultimately it's the politicians who choose what they implement and who will appoint commisioners that share their views on that.
>It might as well be a dictatorship for all the difference that would make to accountability or control by the people the EU administration is supposed to represent.
How did Europe forget, so soon, what dictatorship is - that you can use the phrase so lightly. The idea that you can have a dictatorship about so narrow a thing as just the economy is ridiculous. Quite recently much of Europe was ruled by dictators who controlled literally every aspect of your lives, every second from birth to death dictated - including choosing the time of death. Who plunged Europe into the biggest wars the world has ever known - not once but twice in 20 years ! Some of them lasted very long - Franco of Spain remained in power until the 1980s !
Right now - Europe over-all is perhaps among the most free societies on earth. The libertarian nutjobs won't think so because they think labour laws are oppresion but sane people realize that the very things they decry as oppressive are, in fact, the very things that make the majority of people free. That give them any freedom at all. To have freedom you need protection - not just from government but from all wielders of power - including economic power. You need regulations on the rich - or they will be the ONLY free people. Indeed, I would go so far as to say, that the less free the market - the more free the citizens.
There is an upper limit to the average level of education a society can have. No society is devoid of stupid people - and they bring the average down. You can't deny them the vote - we've tried that in various ways for centuries, it was always a disaster. So THAT is the reality we have to live with. Sometimes the best decisions will simply not be popular - and it could take years before people experience why they were the best decisions.
It's the same reason the US doesn't elect the judges on the supreme court - you can't have the people who are charged with keeping government in check being subjected to the same incentives as government. You can't have the people who are charged with defending everybody's rights be subject to a vote - that automatically leads to them only protecting majority rights - because that wins elections.
Democracy without checks and balances is just a dictatorship of the majority. That's the first problem. The second problem is that an election is a terrible way to ascertain ability. It's a great way to choose who gets to govern - because government works best when it's held in check by the consent of the governed, but it's a terrible way to appoint people to technical jobs. That's why nowhere on earth is that how it works. People appoint the government - but the actual work gets done by people who are interviewed and selected based on CV's.
Hell even in the parts of the US that's not supposed to work that way it's how it actually works. The director of a federal agency is generally little more than a figurehead. They are political appointments, and they pretty much only do P.R. the job of actually managing a federal agency is done by the deputy directory - who is not appointed politically, typically got there by working his way up from the bottom, has years or decades of experience in that agency and actually knows how the place works.
The director of an agency like the CIA or the Treasury works for 8 years at most, every president replaces all of them with his own picks. You simply CANNOT have them actually be in charge. They may only be there 4 years - they come in with no idea how anything works - it would take a year just to get them trained up enough to understand the operations - then 3 years with a leader with no experience. The two term presidents may have some guys who are marginally competent in their 8th year and just as they get good at the job they get fired.
On paper, they are in charge - in reality, just about the extent of their "in chargeness" is that they are the ones who get blamed for scandals so they have an incentive to tell the deputy to make sure there aren't any.
Frankly - if more *companies* were still run by people who had field experience doing what the company does - the business world would be a much better place. If only boards of directors had figured out what the government has - the CEO is a figurehead, the department heads who were *promoted* (not hired from another company) are the only ones who understand the business well enough to actually make good decisions.
There is a point where democracy comes into play - but it's not in directly appointing the people charged with overseeing the economy - it's in holding to account the government that does appoint them. If the experts are bad - then punish the politicians until they fire them and replace them.
Exactly that happened in South Africa in December. The president fired the minister of finance (ministers are appointed by the president - not elected and are meant to be experts in their portfolio) abruptly and replaced her with another, completely unknown person. He didn't really like the former minister of finance because she was actually doing her job well and not letting him loot the treasury at will so he was trying to replace her with one who will not stand in the way of his corruption.
The population was outraged, there were protests, the rand fell to it's lowest level ever as the markets panicked and the stock market took a massive dip. Within a week he was forced to fire his new minister of finance. The previous one, however, had already found other work and wouldn't take the job. So he was forced to reappoint the one before her - who is well respected and did a good job while he was there the first time.
That's where the democracy is. In holding the politicians to account. It is a GOOD thing that the minister of finance is NOT elected, it means he can do things that the party doesn't like, that are not the most popular policies (those are not always the best ones), and importantly - things the president doesn't like. Sure the president can fire him - but if he does so willy nilly he has to answer to the voters, who have shown that they can and will force him to appoint competent people.
The stunt cost him dearly. In August we held local government elections and it was the worst election the ruling party has had since the advent of full democracy in 1994. Their over-all vote level fell to 53% - it's never been below 60% in any election before - and the lost governorship of the most important metros in the country. They lost Cape Town back in 2006 and the province in 2009. But until now there was only one other town in the country they didn't rule at the mayoral level. But now they also lost Nelson Mandela Bay metro (which must sting) - the most important industrial harbour, they lost Johannesburg (the economic heartland of the country - that's like the ruling party in England losing London), they lost Pretoria - the capital (meaning that parliament now sits with a majority party in a city where they don't govern) and they lost Ekurhuleni (where the biggest manufacturing industries are). Basically - it was a massive blow, and they look set to be seriously hurt in the next national elections. I don't think they'll lose power yet, but they will have a LOT less of it.
When the wrong people are appointed to expert positions - that's not undemocratic because the people doing the appointing are still accountable to the voters, it's them you have to punish.
If Europe's voters are not outraged enough that the politicians who appoint the commission are worried about the risks of not replacing them with more competent people - then they can't be *that* incompetent.
Everything you just said is an example of a pure economic policy decisions which fall under the umbrella of 'should be done by appointed experts who don't have to fear doing unpopular things'. This is the kind of stuff where democracy would be a terrible idea. No personally I am not a fan of what their policy's are, but the whole idea is to be able to have policies that are unpopular because *every* economic policy is unpopular with some people. Interestingly the left hates the EU's economic policies for not being liberal enough - while the right hates them for not being conservative enough. The left complains about insufficient regulation, the right about too much... so maybe they are actually finding good middle ground ... well except for the absolutely insane compulsion to keep trying austerity despite the fact that in all of history it has never ever achieved anything except to make whatever economic problems were used as an excuse to implement it get much worse. The only way out of a recession is to spend - a lot. Austerity turns a recession into a depression, and will keep that depression going indefinitely unless government starts to spend. Just as it did when the great depression hit - it didn't end until world war 2 finally forced the US government to actually start spending and stop with the austerity bullshit. No. Spending in a recession cannot cause hyperinflation. It can't even cause inflation. It's mathematically impossible for increasing the money supply during a recession to cause inflation because by definition a recession is a shortage of liquidity - it happens because there's too little money in the system. No the Weimar republic does not prove others. No neither does Zimbabwe and neither does Nero's Rome. Those are always the examples cited because they are the only ones available and it conveniently ignores what *else* was going on - Rome had been sacked twice in 20 years and then had a plague, the Weimar republic had just lost the second biggest war of all time and Zimbabwe had a complete social collapse.
In no example, ever, did printing money during a recession cause hyperinflation unless there was another - unrelated - example first which destroyed the country's
entire productive capacity. Printing money when nothing is being produced to buy with it - that will cause hyperinflation, printing money in a country that *could* produce if only there was somebody who could buy - that does not cause inflation - all it does is prevent the hyperdeflation that turns recessions into depressions.
Sorry, I digressed. Anyway there is one exception to the list you gave, the speech about an EU military. That would not fall under economic policy, but on the other hand the person who made that speech has no power to act on it. All he did was share an opinion - only the parliament could actually create a European military if they believed it was a good idea.
In the near future - it may actually become a good idea. See Trump has said some things that have made NATO allies very nervous and suggested that NATO would be hugely weakened and deprived of most of it's US support if he were to be elected. In such a scenario, the defence pact that Europe has relied on to keep itself safe may very well no longer be reliable. Then the EU may indeed want a European Military supported by their various national military forces to take the place of NATO without the US.
Now that's an unlikely scenario, Trump almost certainly can't win the election anymore and even if he did it's highly unlikely he could actually get such a policy past congress - but it's no longer an unthinkable one. So thinking about it is not a bad thing and there's no reason you can't think about it, and give speeches about your thoughts, just because you're not part of the government that would have to make the decision. The members of the commision has just as much right to try and convince parliament of their views as you do, they are citizens as well after all.
All of which I agree with. None of which changes that the common legal standard for permission is "legally consented to publication' and that guardians can consent to such things for minors. The entire babyproducts industry bases all of it's marketing on photos of nude babies. All of which requires parental consent - since the models are too young to legally sign a contract.
And this case is effectively challenging the basis of all that (and a whole host of other things). That it happens to also touch on issues of bodily autonomy for a young adults complicates matters. Generally I believe the law should favour bodily autonomy concerns as a fundamental right - but this is a grey area.
I raise my (2 year old) child in a very liberated manner. She was born biologically female but if she were to identify as male when she's older - I would respect that. I teach her that there is nothing shameful about the human body and both her parents are often nude around her and vice versa. I also teach her about consent even now - that you cannot touch anybody's private parts unless you ask permission and they say yes, and nobody should be allowed to touch hers unless they asked and she said yes. The only exception I make to that is bathing her - when the occasional screaming fest is ignored because frankly a two year old is not capable of making the decision not to be clean (and the resulting health risks) on her own. Even then I always tell her it's time to get cleaned because even though the action is utterly not sexual in nature - it involves contact with private parts.
This is how I raise her. I believe in the idea that it's her body - and her wishes about it trumps everybody else's - including my own. So no, I'll never threaten her boyfriends or discourage her sexuality. I will make sure she knows about safe sex and then trust her to make the decisions about it that's right for her, I have no right to tell her what choices to make. Whether she wants to die a virgin or become a prostitute is HER choice, not mine.
So that's where my sympathies lie. Nonetheless there is a matter of what is legal versus what is moral here. And the father had legal consent - which a court is unlikely to mess with because, many years later, the former minor wants to revoke it.
I really do hope the judge pushes for a settlement - because there is no good ruling in this case. Rule against the parents - and you risk the careers of a thousand young performances, every kid who ever wanted to do sports, hell every driver's ed class ! Rule against the girl - and you place serious harm on the issue of bodily autonomy, privacy and dignity - a finding I would rather not have happen, no matter the other circumstances.
That said - the odds are really against her. Americans DO have a constitutional right to freedom of speech, they do not have a constitutional right to dignity as we here in South Africa and most European countries have. The court will, if it comes down to it, be forced to favour the constitutional right over the non-constitutional one.
Yep, I never suggested he was particularly unique for that. Just that this is, indeed, who he was.
Generally - the people who actually create things are almost never the people who get rich from them. That's at least in part because those people care about creating something great, not about getting rich. It's practically a job requirement - you can't care about the greatness of the creation AND about the profitability of the company since the two goals will create vastly conflicting requirements.
Except that you are now conflating two unrelated meanings of the word 'consent'. The meaning as used in sexual laws refers to consent to sexual behaviour, but I was using it's meaning in contract law which is very different. That there is some overlap in the area of statutory rape is an aside.
When a minor wants to enter a contract (technically - as simple as buying a candybar from the local tuckshop) their legal guardian (usually a parent) must consent to them signing that contract. That's a different usage of consent.
And then there is yet a third meaning of consent in contract law, which is of the 'I consent to you using something that belongs to me in a certain way' (possibly with an 'in return for' clause). This type of consent is present in everything from a rental contract to the 'release' contracts signed by reality TV contestent, rental contracts have them, copyright license contracts fall under them.
All three meanings are closely related but have subtle (yet important) differences and this involves both the latter two but NOT the former one. These are not sexual photos nor sexual behaviours - so sexual consent has nothing to do with it. The small overlap with bodily autonomy as a concept only comes from her being the subject of the photos. But a photographer wanting to publish a photo of another person needs would generally need their consent or a strong public interest case. The famous Vietnam Girl photo for example didn't need a model release because of it's extreme public interest value as a news photo.
In this case there is clearly no public interest at play. She's a private citizen, not involved in any event of major public significance (like a war) or running for a political office. So the photographer would need consent of the person or, if it's a minor, from their legal guardian. But this is consent of the third meaning. An allowance to use something that belongs to me.
But the photographer in this case IS the legal guardian and COULD give that consent to himself.
The father has a strong case that he hasn't broken any laws. I think he is acting immorally by not honoring her wishes and personally if a model asked me to stop publishing a photo, especially a nude, I would take it down - even though I have her signed consent at the time (I never shoot without it). But I'm not legally obligated to do so - I just feel a personal moral obligation.
I think the father here ought to feel the same - but that's not a legal argument.
Legally - he has a strong defence against the claim that the legal guardian of the subject of the photos consented to their publication and she cannot now as an adult revoke that contractual consent.
Who the judge will side with is hard to predict because she's clearly morally in the right but her father seems to be strongly in his legal rights. Hence my prediction that the judge will push very hard to get them to settle.
Being legally an adult means you the law treats you as one - among other things, this means you get to use the courts to settle grievances when other methods have failed. You don't get to call her legally and adult but immature for using a legal mechanism created for adults to settle disputes with.
Immature ways of settling disputes exists too - and sometimes adults use them too, the include punching somebody in the face and that - like almost all the others actually - is, actually a crime. Or vandalising their property. Also a crime.
There are only two legal ways for adults to settle a dispute: either they privately agree to a solution, or they go to court and state their case and the judge imposes one on them. That's it. An out of court settlement is really just a reversal to the private-agreement after a legal case has commenced. It adds some formalities to the process but does not change it's nature.
>and if that is the criteria then we should lock everyone in a dark room and hope no one gets aroused by being in dark enclosed spaces.
Faint hope. There's an actual fetish for that. It's called mummification, a subset of bondage, there is another fetish for sensory deprivation - and they do come combined.
Honestly, I sincerely doubt a judge will ever rule on this. As I pointed out above - this case raises serious issues around contract law as it pertains to minors and legal guardians. That's a problem a smart judge would really try to avoid - because there is serious risk for the judge's career. Rule in her favour - you can expect a slew of cases using it as precedent for much less sympathetic causes - which in turn will lead to years of appeals and probably his ruling being struck down along the way by higher courts. No judge likes that. If he rules against her - he risk a major public outcry - notably from women's rights groups and politicians, which is also something no smart judge wants.
So I think the judge is likely to do all in his/her power to get them to settle the case - and judges have quite a bit of power to try and encourage settlements (with good reason). Indeed a judge can actually ORDER the claimants to settle the case and refuse to issue a ruling when the judge believes a settlement is the best outcome and reasonably possible - and if I were the judge (note - not a judge or a lawyer) that is exactly what I would do: order them to settle the case. That works out well - the only likely settlement involves the pictures being taken down - likely without any money changing hands.
That satisfies her wish to get them down and removes the risk that the judge will rule that, as her legal guardians at the time her parents had the right to consent on her behalf to publication and she cannot retroactively remove consent. It spares her parents an expensive payout and further public embarassment over being sued by their kid and it saves the judge from a very thorny issue.
If this actually goes to trial - expect her parents to receive a nice big anonymous donation to pay for their defence. You don't seriously expect Huggies(tm) to risk all the babies whose buttocks they printed on packaging for the past 50 years to start suing them for damages because as adults they don't consent do you ?
> there are untold numbers of child molesters
Actually the evidence suggests this is much rarer than generally believe and almost all of them target members of their own family. Stranger danger is almost entirely a myth.
>and the number of registered sex offenders climbs every year.
Except that there are two problems with your analysis. Firstly - nobody ever gets removed, so the list will always grow even as people die out. Secondly it lists anybody who was ever convicted of any sex-related offence. There are lots of girls on it who got there because they sexted their boyfriend at age 15 which some trumped up prosecutor turned into 'distributing child pornography' . There are tons of people on there who got a public lewdness or indecent exposure conviction for getting caught pissing on a tree one night after too many beers. Quite a few people got on there on a statutory rape charge for having consensual sex with their childhood sweetheart - often sex that was legal the week before (think 17 year old guy, 16 year old girl - they are covered by a Romeo and Juliet law, he has his birthday and turns 18...suddenly he's a "rapist"). A huge number of people on that list are no threat to society at all in fact - and since there's no appeals process there is no way to get off it. Now, of course, a lot of sex offenders are violent asaulters, rapists, date rapists etc. I'm not trying to minimize their crimes - but the wide range of things that can get you put on the list *does* minimise their crimes and certainly makes the sex offender registry useless for actually assessing whether a person is a threat. Too many people on that registry are harmless, and that means you either assume they all are - or you do what most people do an assume they are all as bad as the worst ones. Either way - it ends up being a travesty of justice and the registry does not support your point at all, it's growth rate even less so.
>Embarrassing your daughter in such a way is heinous, in my mind,
Now this, you are right about, and you don't need the previous hyperbole to be right about it.
>Does this woman own her privacy, her nudity, and embodiment of self
She damn well ought to yes. What makes the case legally tricky is that when the photos were taken she was a minor and the photographer was also her legal guardian - who had the right to give consent for them to be taken and published on her behalf. The question legally, is whether as an adult now, she can revoke the consent they gave when she was a minor. That's something a judge will rule on. My gut feel is she should be able to but that gets very tricky legally. What about child models who, as adults, want the ads their baby pix were in pulled ? Would they be able to do revoke the consent papers their parents signed 20 years ago ?
>Whatever is ruled has no effect legally in the USA
Actually it does - rulings set precedent, which has the power of law until and unless a law is passed. That's one form of how common-law works.
>But many women will be watching the outcome, and for good reason.
While I can see that, I'm not sure it's the right case to be watching. There are plenty of real problems with pictures, especially nude ones, published without consent. Revenge-porn cases and the like - which are clear violations of a person's bodily integrity. That's why real photographers have model release contracts - and don't publish photos without proof of consent. But this one is difficult because there *was* consent. As a minor her parents had the right to consent on her behalf. As I said above - the legal test here is whether she, as an adult, can revoke consent her parents gave (in this case to themselves but that is immaterial) when she was a minor ? I'm pretty sure *that* is legally untested as an idea. Generally though you can't worm your way out of a contract your parents signed on your behalf as a minor when you're an adult by claiming you don't consent to the contract. If that changes - then nobody will want to sign any cont
>her attitude about how bad she thinks it will affect her isn't exactly brimming with a mature point of view.
She's 19. How mature do you think she's supposed to be ? How mature were you at 19 ? Because me ? I was a fucking idiot at that age.
Where's the relevance here ?
The two cases literally have nothing in common.
The first is a criminal case. The second a civil case. That is: completely different standards of evidence and procedures.
The first is in federal court under federal law.
The second is in California state court under California state laws.
The only thing the two cases have in common is they involve somebody impersonating somebody else - that is not ipso facto a crime or a cause for civil action. If it was the entire cast of Saturday Night Live would be in jail or getting sued every week.
This particular case violated California state laws since
1) the impersonation caused actual harm
2) It falls under California's law against deceptive business practises.
Are you sure it's a step ABOVE ? I think it's actually a step BELOW.
With that one, chances are it would get spam flagged and forgotten, with the one he DID send it got traced and he is now being sued. Arguably a worse outcome.
Jobs never built a thing in his life. He just got really, really good at a certain kind of marketing - no not marketing to the public (he had people for that) - marketing himself to engineers and designers as a visionary boss who will let you create great things.
Which put him in a position to get rich off of other people's groundbreaking work - with never a reward for those who did the breaking of the ground. That pattern goes all the way back to when he first met his 'friend' Steve Wozniak.
Woz at least recognised the contributions of Apple's other engineers to the outcomes - which is why he gave a crapload of his Apple shares (then worth a great deal of money) away to other apple staff before he left the company.
It wasn't that Jobs was greedy and Woz was generous (though that's true) - it's that Woz, an engineer of the first order, understood teamwork and team effort, while Jobs - a classic psychopath only ever saw other people as useful tools for enriching himself. Looking at the same thing - Woz saw a group of people who created something awesome with him. Jobs saw a bunch of people he could rob.