It doesn't have no bearing--the Supreme Court has held that political speech is that speech which is most protected by the First Amendment. While other speech is still protected, and protected in a major way, the protection of political speech is a fundamental and core purpose of the First Amendment--and courts are more protective of political speech for this reason.
Contracts are sometimes invalid on public policy grounds--we live in a world that recognizes the need for regulation of capitalism, at least in some limited capacity.
Here, there is a question as to whether such a EULA should be permissible; mere consent does not and should not allow all action. I cannot usually consent in advance, for example, to waive my right to sue you if you discriminate against me.
He did not say that Sony did nothing wrong--he said the plaintiffs hadn't made their case. There is a massive difference.
Did the console payment legally entitle the user to have access to the network? The plaintiffs failed to show that it did. Sony doesn't have to provide a reason to be banned if their contract doesn't require them to--whereas Ford and other auto companies might promise to provide service as part of a package that obligates them to do so. But if they required you to disable your navigation system as a condition of their repairing a car they were not obligated to repair, I don't see why you would be able to sue them for that. (It would be a poor sales move, though.)
It might be that the problems suggest, not that the proposed solution should be discarded, but that an alternative solution incorporating both the motivation for that solution and the problems inherent in executing it should be proposed.
For example, perhaps all non-archival copies of the information could be deleted. Furthermore, if the backup system is constructed with the privacy goal in mind, it is possible to give the user control over the ability of the corporation to restore that user's information--a user, for example, might be permitted to order the company to destroy a key that allows decryption of backed up data entered by the user.
Your personal knowledge of a prior event concerning me does not raise privacy concerns. Your automatic and routine compilation of all prior events concerning me and sharing of that information with intelligence agencies, law enforcement, and commercial partners does.
Don't attribute this to corruption or bribery, as there is evidence of none and there is no reason to believe they exist here--particularly with federal judges, there is almost never an issue as to corruption. They don't need to be reelected.
No, here the problem was that the judge viewed Sony's behavior as akin to operating a private park it allows people to drive in if they agree to disable a feature of their cars. So people are still allowed to use the features of their cars if they do not go into the private park, but if they agree--i.e. if they agree to disable the Other O/S feature in order to use Sony's network--then that's fine, and it's not illegal for Sony to ask them to. To win, plaintiffs would have had to show they had a legal entitlement to continued access to the network. They didn't, so the judge tossed the case.
A single juror can not bring about a nullification. It follows the same rules as a jury reaching any verdict. Which also includes jurors that may be racist like you are describing.
So your whole point has nothing to do with nullification.
Actually, that's not true--in criminal cases, juries render unanimous verdicts. Thus a single person can prevent someone from being found guilty.
Prosecutorial discretion is very large. Frequently the wrong decisions are made. Prosecuting a child when a group of children are playing with a gun, it goes off, and someone dies. Prosecuting someone who is insane as if they were not. Prosecuting someone for political reasons rather than because it makes sense. Sometimes a verdict of not guilty is the right result even when someone is guilty, because the consequences of a guilty verdict are more harmful than helpful.
The political process is deeply flawed, and legislative bodies will almost never vote to reduce sentences or decriminalize activities because that is rarely politically popular.
There is a difference between ex-post and ex-ante decisionmaking. In front of a house, one makes a judgment between alternative acts, and the law is one factor that weighs heavily in those alternatives. In a jury, one decides what the consequences of that choice should be beyond those already encountered.
A judge has plenty of immunity. He also has a massive amount of "discretion." If a judge applies all of his discretion in favor of one party, it effectively creates an unfair trial--at the very least an unjust one--even though there is no room for review on appeal.
The problem lies in the fact that courts are relying on popular misconceptions to determine the guilt or innocent of a defendant.
It should be about what the jury believes took place, yes, but there should be a process by which a prosecutor or defendant can correct applicable misconceptions.
Yet this is almost never allowed--the only counterexample that comes to mind is for some courts that allow testimony on Battered Woman Syndrome. That has other empirical problems, but is often brought in to deal with a popular misconception that a battered woman will not go back to an abuser.
The engineer issue was more of an interesting side note.
Administratively, you can't prevent jury nullification without policing jury decision-making. But that is problematic because you run into the problem of the judge who throws the jury in jail because they make the "wrong" decision. (Actually happened a few centuries ago.) In effect, the jury right now gets to make a decision which basically can't be reviewed. The alternative is to give someone the power to say that a jury which held someone had not been proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt is lying.
You could police that jury decision by allowing someone in the jury room to listen to how they made the decision and prevent them from making it based on something other than law. But that person would have effectively more power than the judge, and the jury would effectively have none.
You could also retry people. Double jeopardy presents issues, though.
But I don't wonder.. the above opinion is exactly the sort the lawyers and judges want you to have, because they don't want any common sense injected into their meddling with justice.
Not true. "Common Sense" is given a ridiculous, unjust, and unjustified weight in the courtroom. Jurors are expected to rely on their "common sense" in making their evaluations, to a point where courts will rarely let you present any evidence showing that "common sense" is wrong. Courtrooms are about narrative, about selling a story, about appealing to common sense. It doesn't matter if everyone on the jury is wrong because they have an unjustified belief in the fidelity of eyewitness testimony or of a written document. It just matters what they think. What does their "common sense" tell them about what happened?
Interestingly, laypeople and engineer types sometimes diverge significantly in their verdict. I remember one guy who was on a jury where the defendant incinerated his wife's body. Hung jury because the laypeople didn't believe he'd killed her.
On television, you get a lot of people who don't say "it depends." I'd rather have my friends say "it depends" about most things--there is nuance in life.
Especially on an issue like jury nullification, there are MASSIVE reasons why sometimes it should be used and sometimes it should not be. If your police are being abusive or your prosecutors are prosecuting people they have no business prosecuting or your legislature is passing unjust laws or your judge is not giving someone a fair trial, it may be that jury nullification is your best option as a juror.
On the other hand, jury nullification is most often used as a tool of a racist to show solidarity with a defendant from his or her race, rather than for a reasoned moral purpose. This is blatant racism and is bad.
Though the latter is more frequent than the former, the importance of the former--and the administrative problem with preventing jury nullification while still allowing the jury to have any meaningful power--is significant.
The Roman Empire lasted in some form until the fall of Constantinople. Also, "managably sized units" is not a good reason to split a nation--delegation and limited local governance is possible, and in fact is embodied in our systems of state and local government. Caesar noted that Management of the few was generally the same as management of the many, IIRC. You can have a million people in a city, they have some interests that will be different than those in the countryside, and you need a way to reconcile those interests into a common social contract when it is appropriate--failure to do that raises transaction costs and take value away from pretty much everyone.
In addition, small government *does not* protect against corruption. State governments are far more corrupt than the federal government.
Calling someone a name very rarely helps, and you'll find that most people who are labelled "homophobes" simply have never known or interacted with publicly gay people for an extended period of time.
As far as pushing Mormonism, this is the first I've ever heard of it. I am an Eagle Scout and have been very active in the Scouting community for the last 20 years or so. While Scouting makes a big deal about being reverent, they do not push any specific denomination. There are no religious requirements for advancement through the ranks. My troop was filled with a hodgepodge of Baptists, Methodists, Catholics and a few others. Scout camp chapels were all non-denominational (though a few of the larger camps had chapels by denomination) and very general.
There is a rumor that National has been largely taken over by Mormons; I don't know if it's true--and so long as they maintain the relatively open nature of the program, I don't care. I've known some great Mormons.
You can disagree with BSA's morals or with their admissions requirements or whatever. But please, don't demonize an organization that has done so much good and that is well within its rights to determine these policies you find disagreeable.
This--very much this. The BSA gets a huge amount of negative press, and much of it is deserved--but it doesn't get anywhere near the positive press and credit for the good work it does that it deserves.
It's not that they don't care, it's that the cost to them of committing to the same level of change is much higher--so they don't care enough to make it happen.
Also, you forgot China. It's not like their pollution problem is an eensy-weensy one.
This has major fourth amendment implications--When technology is in use by the civilian public, there is supreme court precedent saying the fourth amendment generally doesn't reach it. (An old thermal imaging case.)
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It doesn't have no bearing--the Supreme Court has held that political speech is that speech which is most protected by the First Amendment. While other speech is still protected, and protected in a major way, the protection of political speech is a fundamental and core purpose of the First Amendment--and courts are more protective of political speech for this reason.
Contracts are sometimes invalid on public policy grounds--we live in a world that recognizes the need for regulation of capitalism, at least in some limited capacity.
Here, there is a question as to whether such a EULA should be permissible; mere consent does not and should not allow all action. I cannot usually consent in advance, for example, to waive my right to sue you if you discriminate against me.
He violated a restraining order. The first amendment issue isn't novel just because he happens to be talking about her on a computer.
He did not say that Sony did nothing wrong--he said the plaintiffs hadn't made their case. There is a massive difference.
Did the console payment legally entitle the user to have access to the network? The plaintiffs failed to show that it did. Sony doesn't have to provide a reason to be banned if their contract doesn't require them to--whereas Ford and other auto companies might promise to provide service as part of a package that obligates them to do so. But if they required you to disable your navigation system as a condition of their repairing a car they were not obligated to repair, I don't see why you would be able to sue them for that. (It would be a poor sales move, though.)
It might be that the problems suggest, not that the proposed solution should be discarded, but that an alternative solution incorporating both the motivation for that solution and the problems inherent in executing it should be proposed.
For example, perhaps all non-archival copies of the information could be deleted. Furthermore, if the backup system is constructed with the privacy goal in mind, it is possible to give the user control over the ability of the corporation to restore that user's information--a user, for example, might be permitted to order the company to destroy a key that allows decryption of backed up data entered by the user.
Your personal knowledge of a prior event concerning me does not raise privacy concerns. Your automatic and routine compilation of all prior events concerning me and sharing of that information with intelligence agencies, law enforcement, and commercial partners does.
Don't attribute this to corruption or bribery, as there is evidence of none and there is no reason to believe they exist here--particularly with federal judges, there is almost never an issue as to corruption. They don't need to be reelected.
No, here the problem was that the judge viewed Sony's behavior as akin to operating a private park it allows people to drive in if they agree to disable a feature of their cars. So people are still allowed to use the features of their cars if they do not go into the private park, but if they agree--i.e. if they agree to disable the Other O/S feature in order to use Sony's network--then that's fine, and it's not illegal for Sony to ask them to. To win, plaintiffs would have had to show they had a legal entitlement to continued access to the network. They didn't, so the judge tossed the case.
A single juror can not bring about a nullification. It follows the same rules as a jury reaching any verdict. Which also includes jurors that may be racist like you are describing.
So your whole point has nothing to do with nullification.
Actually, that's not true--in criminal cases, juries render unanimous verdicts. Thus a single person can prevent someone from being found guilty.
It depends on the facts.
Prosecutorial discretion is very large. Frequently the wrong decisions are made. Prosecuting a child when a group of children are playing with a gun, it goes off, and someone dies. Prosecuting someone who is insane as if they were not. Prosecuting someone for political reasons rather than because it makes sense. Sometimes a verdict of not guilty is the right result even when someone is guilty, because the consequences of a guilty verdict are more harmful than helpful.
The political process is deeply flawed, and legislative bodies will almost never vote to reduce sentences or decriminalize activities because that is rarely politically popular.
There is a difference between ex-post and ex-ante decisionmaking. In front of a house, one makes a judgment between alternative acts, and the law is one factor that weighs heavily in those alternatives. In a jury, one decides what the consequences of that choice should be beyond those already encountered.
A judge has plenty of immunity. He also has a massive amount of "discretion." If a judge applies all of his discretion in favor of one party, it effectively creates an unfair trial--at the very least an unjust one--even though there is no room for review on appeal.
Where is your hate crimes claim from?
The problem lies in the fact that courts are relying on popular misconceptions to determine the guilt or innocent of a defendant.
It should be about what the jury believes took place, yes, but there should be a process by which a prosecutor or defendant can correct applicable misconceptions.
Yet this is almost never allowed--the only counterexample that comes to mind is for some courts that allow testimony on Battered Woman Syndrome. That has other empirical problems, but is often brought in to deal with a popular misconception that a battered woman will not go back to an abuser.
The engineer issue was more of an interesting side note.
Administratively, you can't prevent jury nullification without policing jury decision-making. But that is problematic because you run into the problem of the judge who throws the jury in jail because they make the "wrong" decision. (Actually happened a few centuries ago.) In effect, the jury right now gets to make a decision which basically can't be reviewed. The alternative is to give someone the power to say that a jury which held someone had not been proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt is lying.
You could police that jury decision by allowing someone in the jury room to listen to how they made the decision and prevent them from making it based on something other than law. But that person would have effectively more power than the judge, and the jury would effectively have none.
You could also retry people. Double jeopardy presents issues, though.
But I don't wonder.. the above opinion is exactly the sort the lawyers and judges want you to have, because they don't want any common sense injected into their meddling with justice.
Not true. "Common Sense" is given a ridiculous, unjust, and unjustified weight in the courtroom. Jurors are expected to rely on their "common sense" in making their evaluations, to a point where courts will rarely let you present any evidence showing that "common sense" is wrong. Courtrooms are about narrative, about selling a story, about appealing to common sense. It doesn't matter if everyone on the jury is wrong because they have an unjustified belief in the fidelity of eyewitness testimony or of a written document. It just matters what they think. What does their "common sense" tell them about what happened?
Interestingly, laypeople and engineer types sometimes diverge significantly in their verdict. I remember one guy who was on a jury where the defendant incinerated his wife's body. Hung jury because the laypeople didn't believe he'd killed her.
On television, you get a lot of people who don't say "it depends." I'd rather have my friends say "it depends" about most things--there is nuance in life.
Especially on an issue like jury nullification, there are MASSIVE reasons why sometimes it should be used and sometimes it should not be. If your police are being abusive or your prosecutors are prosecuting people they have no business prosecuting or your legislature is passing unjust laws or your judge is not giving someone a fair trial, it may be that jury nullification is your best option as a juror.
On the other hand, jury nullification is most often used as a tool of a racist to show solidarity with a defendant from his or her race, rather than for a reasoned moral purpose. This is blatant racism and is bad.
Though the latter is more frequent than the former, the importance of the former--and the administrative problem with preventing jury nullification while still allowing the jury to have any meaningful power--is significant.
Right. Because every tech worker in the west is an immigrant (unlikely).
The Roman Empire lasted in some form until the fall of Constantinople. Also, "managably sized units" is not a good reason to split a nation--delegation and limited local governance is possible, and in fact is embodied in our systems of state and local government. Caesar noted that Management of the few was generally the same as management of the many, IIRC. You can have a million people in a city, they have some interests that will be different than those in the countryside, and you need a way to reconcile those interests into a common social contract when it is appropriate--failure to do that raises transaction costs and take value away from pretty much everyone.
In addition, small government *does not* protect against corruption. State governments are far more corrupt than the federal government.
Just because their biased doesn't mean the report is untrue--it just means there's bias.
Is this legal? Didn't they specifically write exemptions into the do-not-call list legislation exempting political parties?
Calling someone a name very rarely helps, and you'll find that most people who are labelled "homophobes" simply have never known or interacted with publicly gay people for an extended period of time.
As far as pushing Mormonism, this is the first I've ever heard of it. I am an Eagle Scout and have been very active in the Scouting community for the last 20 years or so. While Scouting makes a big deal about being reverent, they do not push any specific denomination. There are no religious requirements for advancement through the ranks. My troop was filled with a hodgepodge of Baptists, Methodists, Catholics and a few others. Scout camp chapels were all non-denominational (though a few of the larger camps had chapels by denomination) and very general.
There is a rumor that National has been largely taken over by Mormons; I don't know if it's true--and so long as they maintain the relatively open nature of the program, I don't care. I've known some great Mormons.
You can disagree with BSA's morals or with their admissions requirements or whatever. But please, don't demonize an organization that has done so much good and that is well within its rights to determine these policies you find disagreeable.
This--very much this. The BSA gets a huge amount of negative press, and much of it is deserved--but it doesn't get anywhere near the positive press and credit for the good work it does that it deserves.
Are there chrome equivalents of noscript and Flashblock?
True, on China; sorry, I was thinking about Kyoto more than the permafrost. =)
It's not that they don't care, it's that the cost to them of committing to the same level of change is much higher--so they don't care enough to make it happen.
Also, you forgot China. It's not like their pollution problem is an eensy-weensy one.
Kyllo, maybe? You'll find it in a second if you google it. Florida v. Reilly is also relevant, I think. (re: airplanes and the fourth amendment).
This has major fourth amendment implications--When technology is in use by the civilian public, there is supreme court precedent saying the fourth amendment generally doesn't reach it. (An old thermal imaging case.)
So Trademark law isn't designed to take World War I into account?
Ya know, it was kind of a big deal.