"If it wasn't this, it would be his double espresso wasn't prepared properly."
It is callous and disgusting to equate a coffee snafu with having your sex life made public. More than being callous and disgusting, it is wrong. You seem to imply that his suicide was a foregone conclusion, which is a horrifically disgusting assertion unless you are prepared to back it up with evidence.
1. The rationale for all laws is found at the top, under a long list of WHEREAS clauses. 1.1 Legislators sit around and spend a lot of time carefully coming up with the list, based on what they think the list should contain. That is the same way all laws are made. 1.2 Neither: it's because the crime reverberates more widely in such a way as to prevent classes of people from participating in society. You can sort of think of it as a "chilling effect", which is a term we nerds know well. 2. "Arbitrary" means based on nothing, or based on random whim; you can't possibly be saying that legislators picked protected classes at random. I request that you take back this point and not assert it again. It doesn't help your argument, it just makes you look like you don't know what arbitrary means, or don't know how the classes are chosen. Suffice it to say that the process of determining protected classes is exactly the opposite of arbitrary. 3. These are state laws, or local laws, based on state or local standards, crafted by state or local legislatures. I'm not sure about the rest of this point, but yes, the rationale could probably be fairly described as "minority groups must be protected", although I think that misses some of the important bits. I would say "it is important to protect groups of people who are commonly wrongly denied their right to participate in society".
There may be good reasons to oppose this kind of hate-crime legislation, but you haven't listed any.
You are right in the first sentence, and wrong in the second sentence fragment.
Quoth wiki: Aggravation, in law, is "any circumstance attending the commission of a crime or tort which increases its guilt or enormity or adds to its injurious consequences, but which is above and beyond the essential constituents of the crime or tort itself." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aggravating_circumstance
I'm not a lawyer, but it seems to me that the intent is an aggravating circumstance: the intent increases the guilt (according to statute), adds to its consequences, and is above and beyond the essential constituent of the crime itself.
"Do you see WoW "nerds" getting special protection from bullying, the way homosexuals do?"
Yes.
Does that change the way you feel about it?
If I sat around seething about how WoW players are subhuman, and don't deserve to live, and then I got some friends together and we went in and beat up a bunch of poindexters at a LAN party, that would be a hate crime.
Crimes are often demarcated by intent; intent is an essential and central concept in criminal law. I'm honestly curious, do you think that Western criminal jurisprudence should discard the foundational notion of intent in the definition and prosecution of crime? That question is slightly separate from whether you think these specific hate-crime laws are good or bad; so if you want to retain the notion of intent, but not apply it in this case, then I'm also curious how or why you decide that.
That is interesting. For me to understand what you mean, could you please name some actions which have no consequences? I can't think of any.
Theoretically, all actions have consequences, which is why we use the words "action" and "reaction" in physics. Every action has a reaction, and all of that.
But of course you didn't mean that literally or scientifically -- you meant 'action' and 'consequence' in the human-social sense. Nevertheless, the only "action" I can think of which doesn't have a consequence even in the social, colloquial sense of the words, is perhaps pure thought. Surely you couldn't possibly assert that making an unauthorized sex video of a roommate and posting it on the internet has no consequences, so help me understand what you really do mean.
You have equated "crimes are motivated by a mindset" with "all crimes are motivated by hate". To do so is to equate thinking, with hating. That is wrong, so wrong that I have to assume you didn't really mean it (except that you've said it twice now). As so many others have pointed out, most crimes are motived by things other than hate, such as greed. So I assume you are trying to equate "a criminal feeling greed" with "a criminal hating a person who has what the criminal wants". Is that what you are trying to do? If so, then I have to disagree strongly. To do so would be to reject many ways of distinguishing hate from other forms of thought.
Most of us agree that suicide is rarely warranted by any but the most extreme circumstances. Of course, suicide is especially terrible because it is obviously unwarranted, from the viewpoint of those of us who aren't suicidal. I think that's the crux of the issue: some people taunt and bully the suicidal, because they don't share the human empathy the rest of us feel for that kind of person. Thus, to drive a suicidal person to suicide is so disgusting, that we have crimes for it.
"Why should the law or the government get to mandate good manners?"
Because that's what the law does, of course. What else do you think it does? On the sliding scale of human behavior, from benevolent to benign to malicious, we have a sliding scale of laws from incentives (for benevolent behavior), to no law (for most behavior), to civil fines (for mildly bad behavior), to misdemeanors, to felonies, to capital crimes.
If you aren't an anarchist, then this should be obvious to you.
So... what you are saying is that 18 years old means "boy", colloquially. So then, what is your complaint? Do you think people should stop using colloquial speech? That's a pretty tall order.
"I haven't seen any evidence presented that he bullied or intimidated Tyler"
Well, you and I aren't jurors for this trial, but the evidence is (will be) that he posted a video of the kid having sex, on a public website. You haven't heard about that? I'm surprised to hear you say you haven't heard about that, seeing as how it's sort of the entire point of the story.
"What the fuck does this have to news for nerds whatsoever?"
It was a crime committed on the internet having to do with themes important to nerds, such a free speech and bullying. Have you been reading Slashdot long enough to remember the Hellmouth series? I assume you have not, because if you had you would instantly know why this is news for nerds.
My favorite new minority is dickhead internet posters who make absurdly broad generalizations which don't even have the benefit of being premised on a nugget of truth.
That's a good point, but there is one Achilles' heel in that law: the word "effective". It is only illegal to break 'effective' DRM. I'm surprised we haven't already had court cases defining that word, because it seems to be that since almost 100% of DRM has been broken, that means almost 100% of DRM is not effective. Frankly, the word "effective" renders the law moot, because if the DRM were effective then it couldn't be broken. Alas, I bet that's not how a court would interpret the word.
It seems that you are saying that you believe movie produces would, if forced by the market, drop DRM. They would choose to do so instead of choosing to stubbornly go out of business. If that is what you are saying, then I agree, because that was what I was saying.
"do they really want a film library like they have a music library?"
I don't, but I know lots of people who have nearly as many DVDs as I have CDs, which is a heck of a lot. My sister has hundreds of DVDs, for instance. Me? I have literally never bought a movie DVD, mostly because I am a niggard and almost never want to watch a movie twice, partially because I don't want more physical media in my life, and partially because I've been pissed off about the DVD DRM since the very beginning (in fact, I happen to be wearing my original DeCSS/NO DVD CCA t-shirt today).
But like you, "I wouldn't bet on consumer pressure to remove DRM from movies any time soon". I agree with that, because at the end of the day, market pressure works only in extremely rare circumstances -- like almost never, which is why we remember the remarkable exceptions like music DRM or the Montgomery bus boycott. It is for that reason, incidentally, that I reject libertarian free-market theory as nonsensical fantasy.
I see what you are saying, but it isn't really true. We can't stop copyright infringement with DRM; it's not theoretically possible; it is theoretically impossible.
The entire point of DRM is that, eventually, the encoded bits become decoded, and therefore are available for sniffing, at some point. That is true whether or not the actual DRM scheme itself is broken, which has happened (so far as I know) 100% of the times it has been attempted. If nothing else, then you can simply record the signal produced by your display or your speakers.
But that, I think, is a secondary argument. The primary argument, the one most compelling, is no, screw you, don't make it harder to watch your movies than it needs to be, I won't pay for that, and nobody should help you make that happen. That's the argument I find sufficient and compelling.
In the end, the market will win. If consumers won't buy DRM, then DRM won't exist. It's up to you; tell your friends. We won an amazing victory against the RIAA, now it's time to square off against the MPAA.
I don't agree. At the end of the day, if "content providers" are stubborn and refuse to release their "content" without DRM, while at the same time customers refuse all DRM, then those "content producers" will cease to exist, and will be replaced by new content providers, who are actually willing to... you know... provide content.
Oh, are they not willing to show their movies to people unless it is incredibly inconvenient for customers? Okay, well then they get what they wanted: nobody sees their movie. Yay! They got their way! No 'unauthorized' viewing of their content, because there is no viewing of theircontent! They should be very happy about that.
Consumers have done quite shockingly well at refusing DRM over the last decade. We defeated the music industry for the time being. I think it is quite likely that sufficient pushback from consumers could win the fight against movie companies, too.
Don't I wish that were true. During the campaign, Obama said he'd back off of medical dispensaries, but as President he's cracked down harder than Bush. Yes, that is true, and disappointing.
You just demonstrated you were wrong with your link and the statement "The list of 'districts' where my statement is correct is orders of magnitude longer than the list you can attempt to come up". You backed off of your position ("there is no gun license for using a rifle or shotgun") and agreed with my position ("That statement is demonstrably wrong unless you want to add a clause specifying a district"). Thank you; I accept your apology, and I am quite satisfied to have moved you from a wrong position to a right one. Cheerio!
I disagree. They have found the cause of the error to a sufficient degree as to verify certitude, and they did re-run the experiment. Pedants like you might like to point out that science never, ever proves anything, it merely demonstrates facts such that conclusions are validated beyond reasonable doubt, leaving behind only unreasonable doubt. Some people like to cling to that unreasonable doubt, but the rest of us ignore them. We use the word "prove" as shorthand for "shown to such a degree that only a jergoff would keep arguing about it".
Indeed. You and I agree that a court would have to sift through the facts, and that the facts as presented sound bad for the hunters, but not so bad as to be able to make conclusions with certitude, especially keeping in mind the source of the witness account. That's all fair.
As I went on reading the comments here, though, there seems to be some question as to whether or not the copter was hit by a bullet at all. From the article, it sounded like it was blown out of the air, but further inquiry seems to make that claim uncertain. Some have said the copter merely crashed and gotten a little bent out of shape, literally. So that would obviously be one more fact for a court to decide. And if the central claim that "the hunters shot down our copter" is in question, that makes me question the entire account. Alas, I wasn't there, so I won't speculate on what actually happened. I'll conclude with no conclusion.
Slashdot Mirror
"If it wasn't this, it would be his double espresso wasn't prepared properly."
It is callous and disgusting to equate a coffee snafu with having your sex life made public. More than being callous and disgusting, it is wrong. You seem to imply that his suicide was a foregone conclusion, which is a horrifically disgusting assertion unless you are prepared to back it up with evidence.
1. The rationale for all laws is found at the top, under a long list of WHEREAS clauses.
1.1 Legislators sit around and spend a lot of time carefully coming up with the list, based on what they think the list should contain. That is the same way all laws are made.
1.2 Neither: it's because the crime reverberates more widely in such a way as to prevent classes of people from participating in society. You can sort of think of it as a "chilling effect", which is a term we nerds know well.
2. "Arbitrary" means based on nothing, or based on random whim; you can't possibly be saying that legislators picked protected classes at random. I request that you take back this point and not assert it again. It doesn't help your argument, it just makes you look like you don't know what arbitrary means, or don't know how the classes are chosen. Suffice it to say that the process of determining protected classes is exactly the opposite of arbitrary.
3. These are state laws, or local laws, based on state or local standards, crafted by state or local legislatures. I'm not sure about the rest of this point, but yes, the rationale could probably be fairly described as "minority groups must be protected", although I think that misses some of the important bits. I would say "it is important to protect groups of people who are commonly wrongly denied their right to participate in society".
There may be good reasons to oppose this kind of hate-crime legislation, but you haven't listed any.
You are right in the first sentence, and wrong in the second sentence fragment.
Quoth wiki:
Aggravation, in law, is "any circumstance attending the commission of a crime or tort which increases its guilt or enormity or adds to its injurious consequences, but which is above and beyond the essential constituents of the crime or tort itself."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aggravating_circumstance
I'm not a lawyer, but it seems to me that the intent is an aggravating circumstance: the intent increases the guilt (according to statute), adds to its consequences, and is above and beyond the essential constituent of the crime itself.
"Do you see WoW "nerds" getting special protection from bullying, the way homosexuals do?"
Yes.
Does that change the way you feel about it?
If I sat around seething about how WoW players are subhuman, and don't deserve to live, and then I got some friends together and we went in and beat up a bunch of poindexters at a LAN party, that would be a hate crime.
Crimes are often demarcated by intent; intent is an essential and central concept in criminal law. I'm honestly curious, do you think that Western criminal jurisprudence should discard the foundational notion of intent in the definition and prosecution of crime? That question is slightly separate from whether you think these specific hate-crime laws are good or bad; so if you want to retain the notion of intent, but not apply it in this case, then I'm also curious how or why you decide that.
That is interesting. For me to understand what you mean, could you please name some actions which have no consequences? I can't think of any.
Theoretically, all actions have consequences, which is why we use the words "action" and "reaction" in physics. Every action has a reaction, and all of that.
But of course you didn't mean that literally or scientifically -- you meant 'action' and 'consequence' in the human-social sense. Nevertheless, the only "action" I can think of which doesn't have a consequence even in the social, colloquial sense of the words, is perhaps pure thought. Surely you couldn't possibly assert that making an unauthorized sex video of a roommate and posting it on the internet has no consequences, so help me understand what you really do mean.
You have equated "crimes are motivated by a mindset" with "all crimes are motivated by hate". To do so is to equate thinking, with hating. That is wrong, so wrong that I have to assume you didn't really mean it (except that you've said it twice now). As so many others have pointed out, most crimes are motived by things other than hate, such as greed. So I assume you are trying to equate "a criminal feeling greed" with "a criminal hating a person who has what the criminal wants". Is that what you are trying to do? If so, then I have to disagree strongly. To do so would be to reject many ways of distinguishing hate from other forms of thought.
Most of us agree that suicide is rarely warranted by any but the most extreme circumstances. Of course, suicide is especially terrible because it is obviously unwarranted, from the viewpoint of those of us who aren't suicidal. I think that's the crux of the issue: some people taunt and bully the suicidal, because they don't share the human empathy the rest of us feel for that kind of person. Thus, to drive a suicidal person to suicide is so disgusting, that we have crimes for it.
"Why should the law or the government get to mandate good manners?"
Because that's what the law does, of course. What else do you think it does? On the sliding scale of human behavior, from benevolent to benign to malicious, we have a sliding scale of laws from incentives (for benevolent behavior), to no law (for most behavior), to civil fines (for mildly bad behavior), to misdemeanors, to felonies, to capital crimes.
If you aren't an anarchist, then this should be obvious to you.
So... what you are saying is that 18 years old means "boy", colloquially. So then, what is your complaint? Do you think people should stop using colloquial speech? That's a pretty tall order.
"I haven't seen any evidence presented that he bullied or intimidated Tyler"
Well, you and I aren't jurors for this trial, but the evidence is (will be) that he posted a video of the kid having sex, on a public website. You haven't heard about that? I'm surprised to hear you say you haven't heard about that, seeing as how it's sort of the entire point of the story.
"What the fuck does this have to news for nerds whatsoever?"
It was a crime committed on the internet having to do with themes important to nerds, such a free speech and bullying. Have you been reading Slashdot long enough to remember the Hellmouth series? I assume you have not, because if you had you would instantly know why this is news for nerds.
"all crimes against another person are hate crimes"
No, they aren't. You should stop making that a part of your thinking, because it is wrong.
My favorite new minority is dickhead internet posters who make absurdly broad generalizations which don't even have the benefit of being premised on a nugget of truth.
Bummer, it sucks to call first post and then not get first post. And the actual first poster made a decent joke, too.
That's a good point, but there is one Achilles' heel in that law: the word "effective". It is only illegal to break 'effective' DRM. I'm surprised we haven't already had court cases defining that word, because it seems to be that since almost 100% of DRM has been broken, that means almost 100% of DRM is not effective. Frankly, the word "effective" renders the law moot, because if the DRM were effective then it couldn't be broken. Alas, I bet that's not how a court would interpret the word.
It seems that you are saying that you believe movie produces would, if forced by the market, drop DRM. They would choose to do so instead of choosing to stubbornly go out of business. If that is what you are saying, then I agree, because that was what I was saying.
"do they really want a film library like they have a music library?"
I don't, but I know lots of people who have nearly as many DVDs as I have CDs, which is a heck of a lot. My sister has hundreds of DVDs, for instance. Me? I have literally never bought a movie DVD, mostly because I am a niggard and almost never want to watch a movie twice, partially because I don't want more physical media in my life, and partially because I've been pissed off about the DVD DRM since the very beginning (in fact, I happen to be wearing my original DeCSS/NO DVD CCA t-shirt today).
But like you, "I wouldn't bet on consumer pressure to remove DRM from movies any time soon". I agree with that, because at the end of the day, market pressure works only in extremely rare circumstances -- like almost never, which is why we remember the remarkable exceptions like music DRM or the Montgomery bus boycott. It is for that reason, incidentally, that I reject libertarian free-market theory as nonsensical fantasy.
What, seriously? It's going pretty well. Although I was shocked to see it happen, consumers won the DRM fight against music companies.
I see what you are saying, but it isn't really true. We can't stop copyright infringement with DRM; it's not theoretically possible; it is theoretically impossible.
The entire point of DRM is that, eventually, the encoded bits become decoded, and therefore are available for sniffing, at some point. That is true whether or not the actual DRM scheme itself is broken, which has happened (so far as I know) 100% of the times it has been attempted. If nothing else, then you can simply record the signal produced by your display or your speakers.
But that, I think, is a secondary argument. The primary argument, the one most compelling, is no, screw you, don't make it harder to watch your movies than it needs to be, I won't pay for that, and nobody should help you make that happen. That's the argument I find sufficient and compelling.
Just like music companies, right?
In the end, the market will win. If consumers won't buy DRM, then DRM won't exist. It's up to you; tell your friends. We won an amazing victory against the RIAA, now it's time to square off against the MPAA.
I don't agree. At the end of the day, if "content providers" are stubborn and refuse to release their "content" without DRM, while at the same time customers refuse all DRM, then those "content producers" will cease to exist, and will be replaced by new content providers, who are actually willing to... you know... provide content.
Oh, are they not willing to show their movies to people unless it is incredibly inconvenient for customers? Okay, well then they get what they wanted: nobody sees their movie. Yay! They got their way! No 'unauthorized' viewing of their content, because there is no viewing of theircontent! They should be very happy about that.
Consumers have done quite shockingly well at refusing DRM over the last decade. We defeated the music industry for the time being. I think it is quite likely that sufficient pushback from consumers could win the fight against movie companies, too.
Don't I wish that were true. During the campaign, Obama said he'd back off of medical dispensaries, but as President he's cracked down harder than Bush. Yes, that is true, and disappointing.
You just demonstrated you were wrong with your link and the statement "The list of 'districts' where my statement is correct is orders of magnitude longer than the list you can attempt to come up". You backed off of your position ("there is no gun license for using a rifle or shotgun") and agreed with my position ("That statement is demonstrably wrong unless you want to add a clause specifying a district"). Thank you; I accept your apology, and I am quite satisfied to have moved you from a wrong position to a right one. Cheerio!
I disagree. They have found the cause of the error to a sufficient degree as to verify certitude, and they did re-run the experiment. Pedants like you might like to point out that science never, ever proves anything, it merely demonstrates facts such that conclusions are validated beyond reasonable doubt, leaving behind only unreasonable doubt. Some people like to cling to that unreasonable doubt, but the rest of us ignore them. We use the word "prove" as shorthand for "shown to such a degree that only a jergoff would keep arguing about it".
Indeed. You and I agree that a court would have to sift through the facts, and that the facts as presented sound bad for the hunters, but not so bad as to be able to make conclusions with certitude, especially keeping in mind the source of the witness account. That's all fair.
As I went on reading the comments here, though, there seems to be some question as to whether or not the copter was hit by a bullet at all. From the article, it sounded like it was blown out of the air, but further inquiry seems to make that claim uncertain. Some have said the copter merely crashed and gotten a little bent out of shape, literally. So that would obviously be one more fact for a court to decide. And if the central claim that "the hunters shot down our copter" is in question, that makes me question the entire account. Alas, I wasn't there, so I won't speculate on what actually happened. I'll conclude with no conclusion.