Almost everywhere online, I use a pseudonym. (Slashdot is an exception because I set up this account so long ago.) I don't want my Twitter/blog/etc accounts associated with my real name so I refused to use Google+. (I set up a Google+ Page with my pseudonym, but that's a pain because you can only follow people who first follow you.) I know some people had switched to pseudonyms, but I didn't want to risk losing my entire Google account over it. Now that they are allowing pseudonyms, I might start using Google+ again.
If you just stop paying the bills and they don't cancel your service, they'll just send you a bill every month. Eventually, they will turn these bills over to a collection agency which will hound you for payment and which will, in turn, ruin your credit score.
Sadly, then the company will send your unpaid bills to a collection agency who will hound you for payment and which will ruin your credit score. The burden will be on you to prove that you told them to cancel your service and they didn't. It won't be impossible, mind you, but you'll need to fight to clear your credit because some company refuses to stop billing you in the hopes that you'll just send them more money because it's easier than trying to cancel.
Not always if the slanderer is in another country.
I had someone online who was claiming that I was really someone else and involved with some people in illegal activities. She said she was going to contact every company I worked with to tell them of my "illegal dealings." Luckily, I a) only used a pseudonym there (unlike on Slashdot), and b) the woman was certifiably nuts. As evidence to the latter, she claimed that she was a prophet of god. Her proof of my "illegal dealings" were that god told her so. Any sane company would immediately file her complaint to the trash.
Someone else who she pestered (actually the person she claimed I "really" was - her proof? We both liked photography) had his real name and employer online. She contacted him, his employer, and all of his relatives on Facebook (along with anyone who might happen to share the same last name). Given that he is a teacher, her charges involving kids could have caused him to lose his job. Thankfully, he warned his employer about her and they ignored her.
A bunch of us who were harassed by this woman have contacted the police to no avail. Charging someone with slander and harassment from another country is very tricky. Not only that, but when she finally harassed someone in her own country (Canada), the person filed suit... and the police went to her house and told her just who was suing her. Like telling someone charged with harassment who is fighting back ISN'T going to result in more harassment. As far as I know, that case went nowhere. It got tied up in the legal system for a bit before petering out.
So this woman is free to harass more people as she sees fit and our options are limited.
(This isn't meant to say that "Right to Forget" is good. Just that existing laws might not be enough.)
Very true. For all the studios reactions to Netflix as if they were destroying their business, Netflix is their single best hope against piracy. If they gave Netflix the rights to all movies/TV shows from two months past the DVD release date on, piracy rates would drop. (There will always be some piracy. You could give DRM-free downloads of movies for $1 each and some people would still pirate. Those people should just be ignored by the studios as "never would be customers" not lamented as "lost sales.")
But that takes place in a world where copying is illegal: people are repeatedly told that it's a bad thing (ad nauseam; I really don't need to be reminded every time I play my legally purchased movie) and the news is full of horror stories of people being harassed by prosecutors when they do get caught.
Though some might not pirate out of a fear of being caught, I doubt that's many people. Most will either not pirate because 1) they think it is morally wrong to pirate (regardless of MPAA propaganda), or 2) there are options which they view as easier/safer than piracy. Of course, you bring up an important point. We get those "piracy is wrong" notices when we play our legally purchased DVD/Blu-Rays. Every time. The only way we can stop seeing them is to violate copyright law and rip the discs (a technical violation, but something that will never result in prosecution if you don't share the files) or to download a rip (something that can result in prosecution if your downloading tool also shares it out at the same time). In short, we need to break the law to stop being annoyed about the law. Meanwhile, pirates - the people who you would think should be the targets of the "piracy is bad" message - don't get that message at all.
Hollywood Accounting: "That mega-popular movie that broke box office records actually didn't make any money. In fact, it lost a ton of cash." (Translation: "We want to pay the people who worked on the movie as little as possible so we're grouping unrelated costs into that movie's budget to fake a loss.")
Hollywood Accountability: "The reason that movie tanked was because dirty, rotten Internet pirates stole it rather than watch it in theaters or buy the Blu-Ray/DVD!" (Translation: "It was an idiotic movie with no plot, bad acting, and special effects added in a vain attempt to improve the final work. People decided they'd rather light their limited entertainment dollars on fire than see this stinking pile of garbage. Still, we someone to blame who isn't us so... INTERNET PIRATES!")
Counting all the billions in lost sales because of people distributing data by making it available mean that Hollywood and movie studios have run out of money.
Exhibit A: The Lord of the Rings trilogy. It was such a colossal failure at the box office that it never turned a profit. Whose fault was that? Piracy! (What second set of books? No, you can't look at those. Hands off! *puts books into locked safe*)
In addition, renting a film vs seeing a film in a theater is significantly cheaper. If I want to take my family (2 adults, 2 kids) to a movie in a theater, it usually costs about $40 - and we don't even buy popcorn or anything else. This is just "get your ticket and take a seat" costs.
It's been awhile since I actually rented a film from a physical video store, so let's take Amazon VOD rentals for our cost example, Renting an HD movie costs about $4.99. Buying it costs about $20. Buying the Blu-Ray or DVD costs about the same amount (depending on what package you get). More often, though, we rent DVDs by taking them out from our local library. Cost: $0. (Ok, we're paying for it in our local taxes, but that money is getting paid whether we use the library or not.) With the cost of renting it (and especially with buying it), you can watch the movie again and again without paying for another ticket. This just increases the savings.
There are definitely times where we want to see movies in the theater, but these are the exceptions rather than the rule. We go to movie theaters about four times a year, but rent/buy WAY more movies than that. Even before you get into the annoyances of other people in the theaters, the pure cost savings combined with my limited "entertainment" budget means renting/buying trumps tickets.
No, they're the bad guys because they (to use the car analogy) saw someone slightly speeding, pulled in front of them, jammed on their brakes in such a way that the guy couldn't avoid crashing into them, and wrote it up in the police report that the guy started chasing them and crashed into them unprovoked.
In short, they lied on the police report to make it seem as though the drone operators were at fault when the police were. Were the drone operators doing something wrong? Possibly. But if they were, arrest them/charge them with what they actually did wrong, not what the police did wrong to come up with something to charge them with.
Hobby Lobby covers some forms of birth control. Other companies currently litigating against the mandate don't want to cover any form of birth control. For example, Wheaton College or Eden Foods. The ruling simply stated that "closely held" corporations with "sincere religious beliefs" could opt out of providing birth control. "Closely held" actually (by some interpretations) mean 90% of companies in the US and there is no real test for "sincere religious beliefs." The company can simply say "we believe in X" and the court would have to take it as fact.
Of course, the cases winding their way through court system will clarify this, but I'm not very optimistic that it will be a positive outcome for women's health care at the moment.
The Supreme Court majority - the day after the Hobby Lobby ruling - said that the ruling doesn't just apply to the 4 forms of birth control that Hobby Lobby objected to, but to any form of birth control that an organization "religiously objects" to. As far as birth control as medicine goes, the organization will still object to it because, while it is being used as a medicine, it is still serving its birth control function as well. So while they'll pay for insurance coverage of Viagra, they'll make a woman pay out of pocket for birth control.
Don't forget a sense of purpose. You are fighting this extremely large group of powerful individuals who are conspiring to make the public believe a lie. (Be it AGW, the moon landing, vaccinations preventing disease, alternative medicine, Obama not being a secret Muslim lizard robot intent on world domination, etc.) Only you and your small band know the truth and must fight against overwhelming odds to battle the lie. I'm sure many conspiracy theorists feel like they are living in a movie and cast themselves as the dashing hero determined to save the day.
Beyond the "you shouldn't be forced to reveal private matters or be assumed guilty?" Then how about because nothing shuts up groups like this. Say he releases his e-mails and there is nothing incriminating in there. They will find one passage which, if taken out of context, will "prove" their point. Then they'll tout this out-of-content statement all over the place. Sure, some people will see the truth, but many more will believe the lie instead.
To put it another way, I suspect you of committing illegal acts. Send me all of your e-mail correspondence for the last 10 years. I'll pour through that and see if anything looks wrong. If you typed "I hope we don't get caught" in the context of throwing someone a surprise birthday party and sneaking the gifts past them, I'll take that line and use it to show how you're really a shady criminal conspiring to avoid capture for your crimes. I await you sending me all of your e-mails so I can use them against you in any way I see fit.
Why not both work to prevent (or if we can't prevent, at least reduce) Climate Change as well as work to adapt to it? Cover both our bases. I can understand if you take issue with specific means of preventing Climate Change because you think method X is better than method Y, but saying we won't take any preventative measures at all and instead just deal with it when it comes is short-sighted. If you own a home, should you allow the foundation to crumble, refuse to patch it, and just decide to deal with it when the house finally begins collapsing?
Exactly. Look at how often the moon landing has been proven to have happened and how often President Obama's birth certificate was shown to be real. Yet, there are still people out there who think the moon landing took place on a sound stage on Earth (obvious clue: Not enough lens flare for it to have really been from space! What, J.J. Abrams doesn't make accurate space scenes?) and/or that the birth certificate was forged (thus proving that Obama is a secret Muslim who will abolish Congress, form an Empire, crush his enemies with the lightning that he can summon from his fingertips, and turn Joe Biden into a "more machine than man" dark side cyborg. (Oh, now Lucas isn't an authoritative source either?!!!)
The oil companies/heartland institute don't have to create spin anymore, because they've had the most important success possible: making denialism an important part of the identity of a lot of people.
In other words, the spin has become self-sustaining. It would be ironic if we could harass this self-sustaining spin to generate enough energy to stop using fossil fuels and reverse climate change.
The person took my personal information (from where I'll never know) and opened a credit card in my name - in other words, using my identity. This damaged my credit rating. Granted, it wasn't damaged as bad as it could have been, but that's like saying someone took my car for a joyride one night and brought it back with just a dented fender.
Other people who have had their identity stolen haven't been as lucky as I was. The thieves can make off with thousands of dollars worth of merchandise in a couple of days/weeks and the person won't find out about it until the collection agencies come calling for payment. Then, it can take months or years to get your credit rating back to where it was pre-identity theft. In the meantime, you might not be able to get loans that you need or credit cards that you'd like to open. So you can be deprived of access to things you would have had access to had your identity not been stolen. (Lest anyone try arguing that you still have full access to your credit rating the same as if the identity theft never happened.)
Also, if criminal identity theft occurs - criminal is arrested and gives your name/SSN/DOB - you could wind up on police watch lists for years which is a whole other kind of hell. Profiled because you are "a known felon." Failing background checks because of the crimes "you" committed, etc. Even if the error is obvious (wrong skin color, alibi about where you were when "you" were arrested, etc), purging it from the police systems takes years of effort. One system left with the error will start flowing it back to the other systems and start the process all over again.
So it's not that you lose all access to your identity, but rather that your identity becomes tarnished and damaged and it can take you a lot of time, money, and effort to fix it.
The Supreme Court majority can't even get their excuses for the Hobby Lobby verdict right. When the verdict came out, they said it was a limited verdict on just those forms of birth control and the form declaring the institution a religious institution was a good workaround. The next day, they said the verdict applies to all forms of birth control. (Apparently, the company just needs to "religiously believe" that something is wrong and they don't need to cover it in their health care plans.) The next day, they made a preliminary ruling in another case that said that the form declaring that an institution has religious issues with something wasn't good. The very form they pointed to 2 days earlier as a good thing. Now, merely requiring an institution to declare "we are religiously offended by X" is offensive.
Of course, Hobby Lobby apparently has no problem covering Viagra regardless of the marital state of their male employees.
I'd boycott Hobby Lobby, but we never shop there anyway as we've known about - and had issues with - the owners making personal religious beliefs into company policy for years. We much prefer Michael's or JoAnn's.
Don't forget that stress is a factor in bad health.
"We've detected your internal stress levels rose so we're charging you $5 more... Wait, they just rose more. $10. There they go again. $15. Boy you really have a problem with stress, $20. $25. $40!"
Slashdot Mirror
Almost everywhere online, I use a pseudonym. (Slashdot is an exception because I set up this account so long ago.) I don't want my Twitter/blog/etc accounts associated with my real name so I refused to use Google+. (I set up a Google+ Page with my pseudonym, but that's a pain because you can only follow people who first follow you.) I know some people had switched to pseudonyms, but I didn't want to risk losing my entire Google account over it. Now that they are allowing pseudonyms, I might start using Google+ again.
If you just stop paying the bills and they don't cancel your service, they'll just send you a bill every month. Eventually, they will turn these bills over to a collection agency which will hound you for payment and which will, in turn, ruin your credit score.
Sadly, then the company will send your unpaid bills to a collection agency who will hound you for payment and which will ruin your credit score. The burden will be on you to prove that you told them to cancel your service and they didn't. It won't be impossible, mind you, but you'll need to fight to clear your credit because some company refuses to stop billing you in the hopes that you'll just send them more money because it's easier than trying to cancel.
Not always if the slanderer is in another country.
I had someone online who was claiming that I was really someone else and involved with some people in illegal activities. She said she was going to contact every company I worked with to tell them of my "illegal dealings." Luckily, I a) only used a pseudonym there (unlike on Slashdot), and b) the woman was certifiably nuts. As evidence to the latter, she claimed that she was a prophet of god. Her proof of my "illegal dealings" were that god told her so. Any sane company would immediately file her complaint to the trash.
Someone else who she pestered (actually the person she claimed I "really" was - her proof? We both liked photography) had his real name and employer online. She contacted him, his employer, and all of his relatives on Facebook (along with anyone who might happen to share the same last name). Given that he is a teacher, her charges involving kids could have caused him to lose his job. Thankfully, he warned his employer about her and they ignored her.
A bunch of us who were harassed by this woman have contacted the police to no avail. Charging someone with slander and harassment from another country is very tricky. Not only that, but when she finally harassed someone in her own country (Canada), the person filed suit... and the police went to her house and told her just who was suing her. Like telling someone charged with harassment who is fighting back ISN'T going to result in more harassment. As far as I know, that case went nowhere. It got tied up in the legal system for a bit before petering out.
So this woman is free to harass more people as she sees fit and our options are limited.
(This isn't meant to say that "Right to Forget" is good. Just that existing laws might not be enough.)
Very true. For all the studios reactions to Netflix as if they were destroying their business, Netflix is their single best hope against piracy. If they gave Netflix the rights to all movies/TV shows from two months past the DVD release date on, piracy rates would drop. (There will always be some piracy. You could give DRM-free downloads of movies for $1 each and some people would still pirate. Those people should just be ignored by the studios as "never would be customers" not lamented as "lost sales.")
Though some might not pirate out of a fear of being caught, I doubt that's many people. Most will either not pirate because 1) they think it is morally wrong to pirate (regardless of MPAA propaganda), or 2) there are options which they view as easier/safer than piracy. Of course, you bring up an important point. We get those "piracy is wrong" notices when we play our legally purchased DVD/Blu-Rays. Every time. The only way we can stop seeing them is to violate copyright law and rip the discs (a technical violation, but something that will never result in prosecution if you don't share the files) or to download a rip (something that can result in prosecution if your downloading tool also shares it out at the same time). In short, we need to break the law to stop being annoyed about the law. Meanwhile, pirates - the people who you would think should be the targets of the "piracy is bad" message - don't get that message at all.
Way to properly target your message, MPAA!
Hollywood Accounting: "That mega-popular movie that broke box office records actually didn't make any money. In fact, it lost a ton of cash." (Translation: "We want to pay the people who worked on the movie as little as possible so we're grouping unrelated costs into that movie's budget to fake a loss.")
Hollywood Accountability: "The reason that movie tanked was because dirty, rotten Internet pirates stole it rather than watch it in theaters or buy the Blu-Ray/DVD!" (Translation: "It was an idiotic movie with no plot, bad acting, and special effects added in a vain attempt to improve the final work. People decided they'd rather light their limited entertainment dollars on fire than see this stinking pile of garbage. Still, we someone to blame who isn't us so... INTERNET PIRATES!")
Pete is a cat, not a dog. (He was originally a villain against Mickey Mouse.)
Exhibit A: The Lord of the Rings trilogy. It was such a colossal failure at the box office that it never turned a profit. Whose fault was that? Piracy! (What second set of books? No, you can't look at those. Hands off! *puts books into locked safe*)
In addition, renting a film vs seeing a film in a theater is significantly cheaper. If I want to take my family (2 adults, 2 kids) to a movie in a theater, it usually costs about $40 - and we don't even buy popcorn or anything else. This is just "get your ticket and take a seat" costs.
It's been awhile since I actually rented a film from a physical video store, so let's take Amazon VOD rentals for our cost example, Renting an HD movie costs about $4.99. Buying it costs about $20. Buying the Blu-Ray or DVD costs about the same amount (depending on what package you get). More often, though, we rent DVDs by taking them out from our local library. Cost: $0. (Ok, we're paying for it in our local taxes, but that money is getting paid whether we use the library or not.) With the cost of renting it (and especially with buying it), you can watch the movie again and again without paying for another ticket. This just increases the savings.
There are definitely times where we want to see movies in the theater, but these are the exceptions rather than the rule. We go to movie theaters about four times a year, but rent/buy WAY more movies than that. Even before you get into the annoyances of other people in the theaters, the pure cost savings combined with my limited "entertainment" budget means renting/buying trumps tickets.
I wonder if they'll detect that super-harmful chemical dihydrogen monoxide?
Which is why we should write out "2014" as "000000000000002014". That should last us long enough.
No, they're the bad guys because they (to use the car analogy) saw someone slightly speeding, pulled in front of them, jammed on their brakes in such a way that the guy couldn't avoid crashing into them, and wrote it up in the police report that the guy started chasing them and crashed into them unprovoked.
In short, they lied on the police report to make it seem as though the drone operators were at fault when the police were. Were the drone operators doing something wrong? Possibly. But if they were, arrest them/charge them with what they actually did wrong, not what the police did wrong to come up with something to charge them with.
Hobby Lobby covers some forms of birth control. Other companies currently litigating against the mandate don't want to cover any form of birth control. For example, Wheaton College or Eden Foods. The ruling simply stated that "closely held" corporations with "sincere religious beliefs" could opt out of providing birth control. "Closely held" actually (by some interpretations) mean 90% of companies in the US and there is no real test for "sincere religious beliefs." The company can simply say "we believe in X" and the court would have to take it as fact.
Of course, the cases winding their way through court system will clarify this, but I'm not very optimistic that it will be a positive outcome for women's health care at the moment.
The Supreme Court majority - the day after the Hobby Lobby ruling - said that the ruling doesn't just apply to the 4 forms of birth control that Hobby Lobby objected to, but to any form of birth control that an organization "religiously objects" to. As far as birth control as medicine goes, the organization will still object to it because, while it is being used as a medicine, it is still serving its birth control function as well. So while they'll pay for insurance coverage of Viagra, they'll make a woman pay out of pocket for birth control.
Evidence against them? What evidence against them?
(Conspiracy groups either ignore evidence against them or claim it is part of the conspiracy.)
Don't forget a sense of purpose. You are fighting this extremely large group of powerful individuals who are conspiring to make the public believe a lie. (Be it AGW, the moon landing, vaccinations preventing disease, alternative medicine, Obama not being a secret Muslim lizard robot intent on world domination, etc.) Only you and your small band know the truth and must fight against overwhelming odds to battle the lie. I'm sure many conspiracy theorists feel like they are living in a movie and cast themselves as the dashing hero determined to save the day.
Beyond the "you shouldn't be forced to reveal private matters or be assumed guilty?" Then how about because nothing shuts up groups like this. Say he releases his e-mails and there is nothing incriminating in there. They will find one passage which, if taken out of context, will "prove" their point. Then they'll tout this out-of-content statement all over the place. Sure, some people will see the truth, but many more will believe the lie instead.
To put it another way, I suspect you of committing illegal acts. Send me all of your e-mail correspondence for the last 10 years. I'll pour through that and see if anything looks wrong. If you typed "I hope we don't get caught" in the context of throwing someone a surprise birthday party and sneaking the gifts past them, I'll take that line and use it to show how you're really a shady criminal conspiring to avoid capture for your crimes. I await you sending me all of your e-mails so I can use them against you in any way I see fit.
Why not both work to prevent (or if we can't prevent, at least reduce) Climate Change as well as work to adapt to it? Cover both our bases. I can understand if you take issue with specific means of preventing Climate Change because you think method X is better than method Y, but saying we won't take any preventative measures at all and instead just deal with it when it comes is short-sighted. If you own a home, should you allow the foundation to crumble, refuse to patch it, and just decide to deal with it when the house finally begins collapsing?
Exactly. Look at how often the moon landing has been proven to have happened and how often President Obama's birth certificate was shown to be real. Yet, there are still people out there who think the moon landing took place on a sound stage on Earth (obvious clue: Not enough lens flare for it to have really been from space! What, J.J. Abrams doesn't make accurate space scenes?) and/or that the birth certificate was forged (thus proving that Obama is a secret Muslim who will abolish Congress, form an Empire, crush his enemies with the lightning that he can summon from his fingertips, and turn Joe Biden into a "more machine than man" dark side cyborg. (Oh, now Lucas isn't an authoritative source either?!!!)
In other words, the spin has become self-sustaining. It would be ironic if we could harass this self-sustaining spin to generate enough energy to stop using fossil fuels and reverse climate change.
"Why this isn't climate change at all! It's *removes mask from monster* Michael Mann and 97% of the world's scientists!"
"We would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for you meddling billionaires!"
(Oops. Should have added a spoiler alert.)
The person took my personal information (from where I'll never know) and opened a credit card in my name - in other words, using my identity. This damaged my credit rating. Granted, it wasn't damaged as bad as it could have been, but that's like saying someone took my car for a joyride one night and brought it back with just a dented fender.
Other people who have had their identity stolen haven't been as lucky as I was. The thieves can make off with thousands of dollars worth of merchandise in a couple of days/weeks and the person won't find out about it until the collection agencies come calling for payment. Then, it can take months or years to get your credit rating back to where it was pre-identity theft. In the meantime, you might not be able to get loans that you need or credit cards that you'd like to open. So you can be deprived of access to things you would have had access to had your identity not been stolen. (Lest anyone try arguing that you still have full access to your credit rating the same as if the identity theft never happened.)
Also, if criminal identity theft occurs - criminal is arrested and gives your name/SSN/DOB - you could wind up on police watch lists for years which is a whole other kind of hell. Profiled because you are "a known felon." Failing background checks because of the crimes "you" committed, etc. Even if the error is obvious (wrong skin color, alibi about where you were when "you" were arrested, etc), purging it from the police systems takes years of effort. One system left with the error will start flowing it back to the other systems and start the process all over again.
So it's not that you lose all access to your identity, but rather that your identity becomes tarnished and damaged and it can take you a lot of time, money, and effort to fix it.
The Supreme Court majority can't even get their excuses for the Hobby Lobby verdict right. When the verdict came out, they said it was a limited verdict on just those forms of birth control and the form declaring the institution a religious institution was a good workaround. The next day, they said the verdict applies to all forms of birth control. (Apparently, the company just needs to "religiously believe" that something is wrong and they don't need to cover it in their health care plans.) The next day, they made a preliminary ruling in another case that said that the form declaring that an institution has religious issues with something wasn't good. The very form they pointed to 2 days earlier as a good thing. Now, merely requiring an institution to declare "we are religiously offended by X" is offensive.
Of course, Hobby Lobby apparently has no problem covering Viagra regardless of the marital state of their male employees.
I'd boycott Hobby Lobby, but we never shop there anyway as we've known about - and had issues with - the owners making personal religious beliefs into company policy for years. We much prefer Michael's or JoAnn's.
Don't forget that stress is a factor in bad health.
"We've detected your internal stress levels rose so we're charging you $5 more... Wait, they just rose more. $10. There they go again. $15. Boy you really have a problem with stress, $20. $25. $40!"