It seems to me that most of these cases arise when people try and apply current law, in the main designed for printed material, to the internet. They don't seem to realise the implicit "transfer of trust" that occurs when you use a distributed naming and routing system. Hence I believe you can easily argue that while magazines (for example) could be held accountable for their content (since they explicity select or write it prior to publication) whereas ISP's cannot.
I'm not a great fan of censorship in any form, though I can tolerate it in a very limited degree (not that we have much choice these days). But I think most people will agree that cases like this are pretty absurd. If you are going to declare anyone responsible for a newsgroup posting, it should only ever be the author - and then the newsgroup moderator before the ISP. If it's an unmoderated newsgroup everyone's going to take it with a pinch of salt anyway. Oh but I forgot, that's attempting to apply common sense to the legal profession - we can't have that, we might actually have a FAIR legal system then, and obviously that would be completely out of order.
Here's hoping that Demon do manage to get the notion through Parliment's (seemingly incredibly dense) skulls that ISP's should not be held responsible.
Whether it breeds corruption or not is of course a matter purely of personal opinion. I personally do not share this opinion - but the point is, does it really matter? I very highly doubt the British government is any more corrupt than the US government, and indeed substantially less corrupt than quite a number of other countries worldwide. No matter what people might have said about it breeding 'tyrants' the fact of the matter is the people elect the government, and they are the primary source of legislation. The very fact that if they don't do well they will be voted out acts as a detterent to corruption - especially with the press keeping such a close watch on them - any hint of corruption and it'll be splashed all over the pages, which would be extremely damaging to public opinion of them. And as to your comment about the upper seats you get by heraldry - I admit perhaps this isn't the best system. But the whole point is they're not voted in - having them voted would simply produce another government. They wouldn't have any aims, interests or ideals different to that of a government. They are there to act as a safety barrier for legislation they feel would be damaging, so what good is having the same government look at something twice? I would be perfectly willing to accept alternative systems, but at the moment it works - perhaps not perfectly, but it works. Oh and while I'm at it, God save the Queen and all.
Microsoft is not the answer, NO is the answer. Microsoft is the question.
If you want to write a "nice looking" presentation, report, etc. have you considered using LaTeX? I know some people might feel it's hard to use, but as of a couple of weeks ago I'd never used LaTeX or TeX in my life, or even seen sample source for it. With the aid of LyX I wrote a 10000 word dissertation in it, including tables, diagrams, contents pages, etc.. And it looked substantially better than I've ever seen someone achieve with something like Word. And it only took me about 5 days (last time I wrote a project of around 8000 words in Word, it took me about 8 days, because it kept crashing / misnumbering figures / messing up bibliography references etc..) I agree that you shouldn't be thinking about the software - but should you be thinking about the presentation? Surely the software should get the presentation right for you, and you should be worrying about the content! The software industry shows what happens when people worry more about presentation than content... Mentioning no names...
Microsoft is not the answer, NO is the answer. Microsoft is the question. - Andy
Slashdot Mirror
It seems to me that most of these cases arise when people try and apply current law, in the main designed for printed material, to the internet. They don't seem to realise the implicit "transfer of trust" that occurs when you use a distributed naming and routing system. Hence I believe you can easily argue that while magazines (for example) could be held accountable for their content (since they explicity select or write it prior to publication) whereas ISP's cannot.
I'm not a great fan of censorship in any form, though I can tolerate it in a very limited degree (not that we have much choice these days). But I think most people will agree that cases like this are pretty absurd. If you are going to declare anyone responsible for a newsgroup posting, it should only ever be the author - and then the newsgroup moderator before the ISP. If it's an unmoderated newsgroup everyone's going to take it with a pinch of salt anyway. Oh but I forgot, that's attempting to apply common sense to the legal profession - we can't have that, we might actually have a FAIR legal system then, and obviously that would be completely out of order.
Here's hoping that Demon do manage to get the notion through Parliment's (seemingly incredibly dense) skulls that ISP's should not be held responsible.
Whether it breeds corruption or not is of course a matter purely of personal opinion. I personally do not share this opinion - but the point is, does it really matter? I very highly doubt the British government is any more corrupt than the US government, and indeed substantially less corrupt than quite a number of other countries worldwide. No matter what people might have said about it breeding 'tyrants' the fact of the matter is the people elect the government, and they are the primary source of legislation. The very fact that if they don't do well they will be voted out acts as a detterent to corruption - especially with the press keeping such a close watch on them - any hint of corruption and it'll be splashed all over the pages, which would be extremely damaging to public opinion of them.
And as to your comment about the upper seats you get by heraldry - I admit perhaps this isn't the best system. But the whole point is they're not voted in - having them voted would simply produce another government. They wouldn't have any aims, interests or ideals different to that of a government. They are there to act as a safety barrier for legislation they feel would be damaging, so what good is having the same government look at something twice? I would be perfectly willing to accept alternative systems, but at the moment it works - perhaps not perfectly, but it works.
Oh and while I'm at it, God save the Queen and all.
Microsoft is not the answer, NO is the answer. Microsoft is the question.
- Andy
If you want to write a "nice looking" presentation, report, etc. have you considered using LaTeX?
I know some people might feel it's hard to use, but as of a couple of weeks ago I'd never used LaTeX or TeX in my life, or even seen sample source for it. With the aid of LyX I wrote a 10000 word dissertation in it, including tables, diagrams, contents pages, etc.. And it looked substantially better than I've ever seen someone achieve with something like Word. And it only took me about 5 days (last time I wrote a project of around 8000 words in Word, it took me about 8 days, because it kept crashing / misnumbering figures / messing up bibliography references etc..)
I agree that you shouldn't be thinking about the software - but should you be thinking about the presentation? Surely the software should get the presentation right for you, and you should be worrying about the content! The software industry shows what happens when people worry more about presentation than content... Mentioning no names...
Microsoft is not the answer, NO is the answer. Microsoft is the question.
- Andy