Yes, it would. But that doesn't show the flaw in the camera system, but rather the legal system. In the US today (pardon my bias), there are laws against so many things that it's impossible for anybody to keep track of them. As a result, we are all minor criminals in some way. (Speeding, jaywalking, failure to yield, etc etc) It is these laws which give law enforcement the power to selectively enforce their power as they see fit. When you can be stopped for having a 'tail light out,' it is the cop who is singling you out. The camera system just gives the cop another thing to look at to see if you're 'suspicious.' If you are, but they don't want to stop you. If you are, and they do want to stop you, they can.
If the cop *wants to stop you* he can and will. It doesn't matter if you're following the entire traffic code up to snuff--you could be getting stopped for a random ID check.
BTW, I have, personally, gotten stopped because my tail light was out. The Cop said "get it fixed" and sent me on my way.
At the same time, however, we must accept that the power of the police is necessary. Somebody has to be responsible for dealing with the person who's breaking into your house, or who stole my car last month (grr). There has to be a presence to keep order in society or else we would tear ourselves apart. That power must be carefully kept in check, don't get me wrong, but it must be there.
This is what courts are for. If the Police Officer misidentifes you with a speeding car, you can contest his claim in court if you want to. Don't pay a lawyer, and just tell your tale to a jury. The State has to pay the cop, the DA, and a jury... and the worst thing that can happen is exactly what happens if you sign that ticket "guilty" and send it in.
I personally favor officers of the law erring on the side of public safety when completing their actions. If I get stopped and asked for ID because I look like a known criminal, well, then I'll just be more worried that there's a criminal out there who looks like me than that I have to show my ID to a cop.
IANAL, but honestly, I don't see any real reason to protect code more than, oh, any other system of instruction. Of, if you insist, to treat it any better than simple *action.*
It's not a civil liberty. It's an action--and it should be treated exactly the same. Treating it like "speech" is what demans our civil liberties--not people trying to outsmart software pirates.
You are presuming that God is just like a human. That he has the same limitations as humans and the same tendencies as humans do. God is omnipotent. If anybody has the power to express his desires he does.
Of course he does. God can reveal himself directly to a person--which eliminates any doubt, as well as any possibility of testing faith. When God uses human lanaguage, though, he does so within that languages's limitations.
If this is true then it's a horrible failure of God. God knew that people would be trying to follow his will for centuries (he alone knows how long). He knew/knows/willknow the future and knew the languages that would be prevelant in the future. His inability to express his desires in a format understandable by everybody at every time speaks volumes to me.
For this very same reason Jews and Muslims, and Christians for MANY years, refused to translate the holy text, less some non-obvious message be lost. What translations have been made have been done in good faith--and what errancies enter there are the fault of man, not God.
Once again he could have just come out and said it. He could have but he chose to be coy instead. I wonder why.
Probably because sex isn't important--IIRC, Christ mentioned it only once, and that was to say that it was not right to stone a woman for being an adultress.
And besides Christ offers forgiveness of all sins so it makes no sense even have ten commandments.
The enumeration of sins is something that is good, as it points out what things are sins and must be forgiven. However, if they aren't there, then it becomes harder and harder to not live in sin.
For the record, the "replacement" of the old testament occurs in Acts, where Paul (a jew and a disciple) has a vision from God.
This is part I don't understand. All of it is god's word. All of it was written by god. Why would god write irrelevant words? why would you ignore any sentence uttered by god?
Tell me, how important is it to my salvation that I know the exact famly tree between Seth and Moses? More or less important than the actual commands of god? ("Thou shalt not murder" "Love thy neighbor", etc.)
God would write irrelevant words for the same reason that you our I would. He would also remove them from His Book, but just because all of His Book is relevant doesn't mean that it's all equally relevant.
In the bible (leviticus I think) it says that "if a man sleeps with another man they should both be killed" (not an exact quote look it up).
Sure. Leviticus 18:22 and 20:33. Both of which are translated many different ways--and both of which can give a different message entirely from a hebrew perspective.
Take a look at Ruth 1:16-17 and 2:10-11, which describe Ruth's close friendship with Naomi--closer than Xena & Gabrielle's friendship for most of their TV run, and closer than any non-sexual relationship I can think of.
Or, if you'd like, start reading at the Ten Comandments and keep going--there are a lot of laws that simply aren't followed anymore.
If you can look at this sentence and say to me "well god didn't really mean that" then I can point at any passage and say "he didn't mean that". If you say "it doesn't count because it's the old testemant" then I can say "the ten commandmends don't count because they are in the old testament". Do you see where I am coming from here. The minute you give yourself the right to ignore, minimize or choose to interpret any way you want any passage in the bible you give me the exact same right.
I've already stated that you have the right to ignore the bible if you want to. That's the basic right of free will--and it's even more important when the people giving you His Will are fallable.
We could continue to debate the finer points of His Word, on or off slashdot, but it doesn't seem relevant to the current debate.
Maybe you will go to hell for not killing homosexuals have you thought about that? How dare you ignore the word of god.
Not likely. Hebrews didn't preach about Hell, and Christ offers forgiveness of all sins, not just the ones you know about.
Not a troll, not sarcasm--just someone with a different opinion.
can a religious person honestly say that any WORD OF GOD (that being all of the bible) is unimportant "fluff?"
No, he cannot. But I didn't. I said that some parts of the Bible (like, oh, the "begats") are less important to the message as a whole than others.
And I can compare the drunken posts of slashdot wit the divine word--both are communications that take considerbale effort to understand, and both bring considerable debate and discorse. The comparison doesn't go much past that, though.
I agree: the vast majority of the flock--of ANY flock--doesn't know the message. And neither do the vast majority of the shepards, all too many of which are sheep themselves.
The Bible is a key that holds "all that is needed for salvation." However, it's a journey that all (wo)men must take themselves--sticking to your faith on, well, blind faith won't get you to where you say you're going. Searching for things to base your faith on, and finding the answers to all those "dangerous questions," will.
OTOH, any church that doesn't think it's got the message 100% right isn't worthy of the name. If only they'd stop falling into the Istarian fallicy.
I think its asanine in its own way to believe that anyone could comprehend a entity that is powerful enough to creative the universe.
You acutally think that it is beyond the capabilities of God (an omnipotent being who created All and is able to hide himself from science) to cause us puny mortals to understand him?
I can respect the argument that He doesn't exist. I'll let slide the argument that we created Him. But I just can't comprehend the faulty logic that says that, if He exists, there's no was that we can understand Him.
For the record, Jeremy, I agree with you on a few points about religion. It's a way for God's shepards to tend to his flock. Some of us, though, are able to follow His way without a shepard--and for those few people, going to Church only makes sense if one acts like a shepard, not a sheep.
There are many other posts on slashdot, just as there are many chapters in the bible. Some chapters have more relevance and importance that others--for example, chapters teaching directly are more important than chapters teaching the rationale, or the consequences of failure.
Within each chapter, as within each post, there are verses that are simply there to hold it together--and which can be toned down as not important for whole message.
****
Leaving biblical necessity behind, OF COURSE you have the right to ignore any part of the bible you want. You might not get into heaven, but you also might get there without ever opening up that book or hearing a single verse.
Free Will is something that man has, and that most of the modern world treasures very highly. What most people don't realize, though, is that Free Will is, at its most basic level, the ability to go against the words of authority and do the wrong thing.
Certain things can have consequences, be they damnation, the end of a friendship, or legal repurcussions, but the ability to choose between right or wrong, regarding the consequences as you will, is the very heart of free choice.
Those are some really loaded words. "Drug dealing" is outlawed in Colombia (due to US efforts). Terrorism in Iraq is illegal (blow up a building there and see what happens). I don't know, but I would hope that taking pictures of children in sexual positions is just as bad in China as it is in the US.
Ok, so my examples weren't the best--but you do see the principle. When we arrest a drug dealer, a terrorist, or a peophile, we prosecute them under *our* laws, not the laws of their native country. When someone commits an act that affects the United States of America, and we have a law against just that act affecting us, we prosecute them. If the legislature's gone to far, the courts rule the new law unconstitutional and it's not a law any longer.
IANAL, of course, but here are my considerations of the points you made.
If a Colombian pharmacist dispensed morphine to a patient, but didn't follow US regulations, would we arrest him when he came to the US? If a Colombian storekeeper gave drugs to children, drugs which in the US require a prescription but which in Colombia don't, would we arrest him?
If they were US citizens, and we had a law against such behavior, yes. Especially if they came to the US and talked about it.
If an Iraqi citizen blew up a US building, he'd be on US soil, violating US law...of course we'd arrest him.
What if the Iraqi launched a missle from an Iraqi street against the US Embassy? He's on Iraqi soil, after all. Does that mean we can't touch him?
If any act can cause the government to hold someone (citizen or not) liable for what they do outside of the country, then the government can hold people liable for what they do outside of the country.
If a hypothetical Chinese photographer took pictures of babies without their clothes on because of a hypothetical custom of doing so to represent the babies' purity, should the photographer be arrested?
You can do that in the US, and it's not Child Pornography. If it's a picture of a sexually explicit pose of a child, you can't say "but children are so pure" and try to get away with it.
Nudity != pornography
If a hypothetical 19-year-old man married a hypothetical 14-year-old girl, with her consent, (because of a hypothetical tradition of fertile young women marrying virile young-but-older men), and if he took explicit pictures of her, for their own use and enjoyment, and if he behaved toward her as a man should behave toward his wife, would we arrest the man when he came to the US?,
Good bloody question. We might, and he could probably get out on appeal if we did.
A 19 year old CAN marry a 14 year old, even in the US. They might even be able to conjugate without violating NY's stautory rape laws.
If someone drives faster than 70 mph (the fastest legal speed in my state) on a Montana highway, can my state highway patrol arrest them?
Sure. The Highway patrol can arrest them for reckless driving, speeding, and potentially even harassing an officer ("obstruction of justice.") The police could arrest me right now for the murder of someone in Buffalo. The charges won't stick, but they can certainly charge me with the crime. If they're malice involved, I have recourse to sue them--which is a check that keeps them from arresting me just for the fun of it.
If I drive with a blood alcohol level of.08 (not illegal in my state), can your state police arrest me because it's illegal in their state?
Of course not. The NY law (which is, IIRC,.10 anyway) only applies to NY roads.
If a child with a BAB of.05 drove in a state where that was not illegal, but their home state's DMV revoked the license of any child driving with any BAB, the child would, hypothetically, lose their driver's license.
What if I wait until I'm sober, drive to your state, and then talk about driving almost-drunk in my state?
Unless there is a law against it, you've committed no crime.
The Age of Consent in NY is 17, but because the Statutory Rape law doesn't forbid a 16 year old and an 18 year old from getting it on, it's not a crime.
My point is simply that if something is NOT morally wrong (whatever that means to you), and if it is NOT illegal for a foreigner in their own land, and if NO ONE (except corporate attorneys) understands exactly what behavior constitutes a crime, then is it right to arrest foreigners for acts committed in their homeland, when they've violated no laws on US soil?
That's a loaded question.
No, it's not right for the law to hold someone to a wrong that is only a legal wrong, and not a clear ethical wrong when they have no way of reasonably knowing that the law will be applied to them.
However, it is right for the officers of the law to enforce it as it is written. That's doing their job, and they should be fired if they don't. Selective negligence to encourage following of the law is one thing; ignoring the law alltogether is something else.
Freedom and Democracy are not things that exist naturally in the wild. Like any other faucet of civilization, they require a certain level of institutions and traditions to floursih.
In the United States, we use our republic's democratically elected government to balance the freedoms of the many against the freedoms of the few. Somtimes, as with the DMCA, we mess up--but the fact is that we CAN mess up, and the system self-corrects us.
Yes, it's horrible that a Russian programmer was the first one nabbed under the DMCA. But if it wasn't him, it would have been someone else--and, until his trial is over, I'm wiling to give the courts the chance to fix the law that's gone to far.
The Courts fixed seperation in schools, line-item veto, and the legislature's scam against cannabis importation. They're a check on the other two branches, and I'm willing to let them have a crack at it before I'm "embarassed."
As for the jusisdictional part--the US would arrest a drug dealer from Columbia, a terrorist from Iraq, or a child pornographer from China. While the DMCA doesn't rise to the level of any of those crimes, it *IS* a crime, and the other three should be treated at least as well as a DMCA violator.
The "reasonable person" was taught in my paralegal classes as last as last semester--and it doesn't seem to be getting loose.
In addiontal to "common sense", a reasonable man never comits a tort, nor does he ever fail to read everything he agrees to, nor the instruciton manual of anything he gets.
A simple "warning, these are very succeptible to static electricty" would probably suffice for the PDAs, but then again, IANAL.
AFAIK, and IANAL, a person's estate can bring a suit on behalf of that person--including for libel, slander, theft, or (of course) wrongful death, among other things.
I think the root message is that you really can't cause damages (i.e., loss of money) to most dead people. If, say, you lied about a person during an interview with a big company that promised full pension to the widow if that person lived a good life, and on account of your lie she's out on the street, you can count on beign named in a lawsuit based on that lie.
Of course, if you're living, and I say something that doesn't cause you damages (for example, "user 36491 is a communist script kiddie") but no one believes it (because of context, or dismissing me as a flame/troll/loser) you really can't use me either.
(Sorry if the above upsets you, anyway. Also, thanks for the reply!)
Agreed 100%.:) mp3.com should have *no* liability for what its users did on Napster. That's like a convenience store being held liable because kids bought alcohol from him, and then went home to make moonshine. Sure, he *might* be guilty of selling to minors, but he's certainly not guilty of making moonshine!
As I see it, and as I think the courts & the lawyers (IANAL) see it, Napster was a store that hung a big sign in the window, "do illegal trafficing here", and then pretended that they didn't know about it.
There's a difference between the bartender who doesn't know that drugs are being traded in his restroom, and the bartender who gets the word out that he's a haven for dealers.
No, it's not a troll. But I see the rest of your point.
Listening to music is not a crime. Making a copy for yourself is not a crime. Making a copy for a good friend isn't much of a crime. But creating a business that just convinces people to swap those copies of music? According to the courts, that's a crime.
I'm no real fan of RIAA, and I would love to be able to get legal MP3s with cash heading right into the bands' pockets. But I can't... and the fact that I can't doesn't give me the right to steal a CD. Or to steal a song. And it *certainly* doesn't give me the right to set up a "file sharing" service that's geared almost exclusivly towards trading other people's livelihoods.
And that's what Napster did. Worse than that, they did it and then claimed that they *couldn't* stop it. They claimed that they couldn't try filters earlier, or that they couldn't expand Napster to more than music files. The court said "stop it anyway or you're out of business", and lo and behold Napster magically comes up with a plan to stop the music. Thus, they're held to tighter scrutiny.
The original post scoffed at the 100% of blockage requirement... all I was doing was noting that for a great many things in life, you've got 100% responsibility allready, even if the Courts don't enforce it on John Q. Public for lack of resources.
You must guarantee that, of all the people you encounter in a day, you do not kill, assault, steal from, or kill 100% of them. You must also guarantee that of everything you say, 100% of it is neither slander nor libel, nor someone else's work.
If you are a previous offender of any of these instances, the government assumes that you *can't* assume this by yourself, and you need to convince them that you can to get them off yoru back
You didn't license the music on that CD; you bought a copy. That means that you get use of the music on that CD based on copyright law.
And the Courts decided that file-sharing is *not* fair use. If you don't think so, talk to your congressman. (And if you're not in the US... well, then start up your own Napster!)
Any and all encryption / security device is just a deterrent. Someone who wants it bad enough will go out and get it.
Now, most people value their time, and there is a certain threshold where they'll just fess up and stop trying to crack something.
RIAA knows this, Microsoft knows this, and even the people who wrote the DMCA know this. (The DMCA just raises that bar for everyone... it's meant to make copying happen less often, not try and make it more difficult.)
All good points, save #1. Joe User had to learn that a link was a link, and that he needs to dial into the internet... Joe User can learn that a red squiggly line or a "smark tag box" is not the author's work.
... and a reason that if such a thing does exist, it needs to have some fairly standard settings.
Say, trademarks & dictionary lookups for multisyllabic words only? And only when it makes sense?
A crude example would be, say, a chat log. If someone were to just hand in an ASCI or HTML transcript of things that were said online, I dont see how that would be admissible evidence, since it only takes a word processessor and a little bit of time to forge/alter. Even with IP logging, THEN you have to proove that no one was spoofing the IP adress.
In the american courts, FACTS are determined by the Jury. Whether or not you were speeding. Whether or not OJ really did kill his wife. All determined by the Jury. For the most part, they simply sum it up as "yes he's guilty" or "no he's not", but to reach that the jury gets to listen to all of the evidence that the judge allows in, which is usualy just about anything that isn't an outright lie or illegally obtained.
Perjury is the crime of giving false testimony. To be convicted, you just need to give testimony in a trial, lie, and then have a DA take the time to convince a jury that you did so.
If you want to know more about the perjury laws, you might want to talk to a law school. If you're a US citizen, you can probably call up the local bar assocation (or the police) and, if they have time, they can probably point you towards someone who can explain the laws to you.
If you're not a US citizen, you might want to just dig around on the 'net, since US perjury laws will probably never affect you. Do a search on google for "US criminal laws" and you'll probably get a few descent hits.
And then of course, say some one dies from this and his/her family comes after me because I "recommended" the pills?
That would be taking the reasonable person standard to a new low.
1:) In every scheme I've heard of (thanks to privacy freaks, I can't actually *see* these things, even if I wanted to), the "inserted link" looks very much different than the web site. For IE, it was an office-like pop-up window, just like the shortcut window when you right-click. For this, it's a squiggly yellow line--the kind of line programs have been inserting into odd documents for their own reasons since Windows 95 came out.
2:) Nowhere did the hypothetical nutritionist say "go take these." In fact, she might have even linked to them to specificy the pills she DIDN'T want people taking.
3: If you are bothered by any of this, you can do any of the myriad options the providers offer for getting you site either de-tagged, or not linking to that one site.
This isn't a good thing. It's a thing that can be abused, but it's not a bad thing.
If I go out and buy a book, and then slap stickers all over the cover art, or tear out every third page, I can still sell it. Once I buy the books for me to sell, assuming no contracutal obligation to the contrary, I can do whatever I want with them ("first sale" doctrine) and then go out and sell them again. (Assuming I'm not making "derivitive works", but, well, that's a whole different ball of wax.)
I really don't get why there's such a community uproar over link-insertion--either this, or IE's Smart Tags. The whole friggin' interweb was founded on the idea of the hyperlink--that you click on a term, and it takes you to other like terms.
Yes, central control over this by one corporation (like MS) is bad. Certainly, add-driven scumbal LCD advertisers using this like the article states is bad.
But the idea itself is good. As long as users can turn it off (or rather, have to turn it on) or redirect who controls the darn thing, the dot.com mentality web designers can just grow up and learn to deal with it.
In any case, IANAL, and even if I was one you should never take legal advice from stangers on the internet, like me
Any special terms in your contract don't apply to those who aren't parties to that contract. (i.e., saying "you can't say "MS Sucks" in a contract doesn't make it so for everyone else)
Your lawyer might know of other laws that apply (say, copyright and patent laws), but the contract certainly won't stop them.
(Which is beside the matter... the hypotehtical SirCam victim didn't steal the document, he was sent it by your company's hardware.)
IANALBIPOOTI (I am not a lawyer but i play one on the internet)
never take legal advice from strangers on the internet. I am a stranger.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, it would. But that doesn't show the flaw in the camera system, but rather the legal system. In the US today (pardon my bias), there are laws against so many things that it's impossible for anybody to keep track of them. As a result, we are all minor criminals in some way. (Speeding, jaywalking, failure to yield, etc etc) It is these laws which give law enforcement the power to selectively enforce their power as they see fit. When you can be stopped for having a 'tail light out,' it is the cop who is singling you out. The camera system just gives the cop another thing to look at to see if you're 'suspicious.' If you are, but they don't want to stop you. If you are, and they do want to stop you, they can.
If the cop *wants to stop you* he can and will. It doesn't matter if you're following the entire traffic code up to snuff--you could be getting stopped for a random ID check.
BTW, I have, personally, gotten stopped because my tail light was out. The Cop said "get it fixed" and sent me on my way.
At the same time, however, we must accept that the power of the police is necessary. Somebody has to be responsible for dealing with the person who's breaking into your house, or who stole my car last month (grr). There has to be a presence to keep order in society or else we would tear ourselves apart. That power must be carefully kept in check, don't get me wrong, but it must be there.
This is what courts are for. If the Police Officer misidentifes you with a speeding car, you can contest his claim in court if you want to. Don't pay a lawyer, and just tell your tale to a jury. The State has to pay the cop, the DA, and a jury... and the worst thing that can happen is exactly what happens if you sign that ticket "guilty" and send it in.
I personally favor officers of the law erring on the side of public safety when completing their actions. If I get stopped and asked for ID because I look like a known criminal, well, then I'll just be more worried that there's a criminal out there who looks like me than that I have to show my ID to a cop.
IANAL, but honestly, I don't see any real reason to protect code more than, oh, any other system of instruction. Of, if you insist, to treat it any better than simple *action.*
It's not a civil liberty. It's an action--and it should be treated exactly the same. Treating it like "speech" is what demans our civil liberties--not people trying to outsmart software pirates.
You are presuming that God is just like a human. That he has the same limitations as humans and the same tendencies as humans do. God is omnipotent. If anybody has the power to express his desires he does.
Of course he does. God can reveal himself directly to a person--which eliminates any doubt, as well as any possibility of testing faith. When God uses human lanaguage, though, he does so within that languages's limitations.
If this is true then it's a horrible failure of God. God knew that people would be trying to follow his will for centuries (he alone knows how long). He knew/knows/willknow the future and knew the languages that would be prevelant in the future. His inability to express his desires in a format understandable by everybody at every time speaks volumes to me.
For this very same reason Jews and Muslims, and Christians for MANY years, refused to translate the holy text, less some non-obvious message be lost. What translations have been made have been done in good faith--and what errancies enter there are the fault of man, not God.
Once again he could have just come out and said it. He could have but he chose to be coy instead. I wonder why.
Probably because sex isn't important--IIRC, Christ mentioned it only once, and that was to say that it was not right to stone a woman for being an adultress.
And besides Christ offers forgiveness of all sins so it makes no sense even have ten commandments.
The enumeration of sins is something that is good, as it points out what things are sins and must be forgiven. However, if they aren't there, then it becomes harder and harder to not live in sin.
For the record, the "replacement" of the old testament occurs in Acts, where Paul (a jew and a disciple) has a vision from God.
Tell me, how important is it to my salvation that I know the exact famly tree between Seth and Moses? More or less important than the actual commands of god? ("Thou shalt not murder" "Love thy neighbor", etc.)
God would write irrelevant words for the same reason that you our I would. He would also remove them from His Book, but just because all of His Book is relevant doesn't mean that it's all equally relevant.
Sure. Leviticus 18:22 and 20:33. Both of which are translated many different ways--and both of which can give a different message entirely from a hebrew perspective.
Take a look at Ruth 1:16-17 and 2:10-11, which describe Ruth's close friendship with Naomi--closer than Xena & Gabrielle's friendship for most of their TV run, and closer than any non-sexual relationship I can think of.
Or, if you'd like, start reading at the Ten Comandments and keep going--there are a lot of laws that simply aren't followed anymore.
I've already stated that you have the right to ignore the bible if you want to. That's the basic right of free will--and it's even more important when the people giving you His Will are fallable.
We could continue to debate the finer points of His Word, on or off slashdot, but it doesn't seem relevant to the current debate.
Not likely. Hebrews didn't preach about Hell, and Christ offers forgiveness of all sins, not just the ones you know about.
Not a troll, not sarcasm--just someone with a different opinion.
can a religious person honestly say that any WORD OF GOD (that being all of the bible) is unimportant "fluff?"
No, he cannot. But I didn't. I said that some parts of the Bible (like, oh, the "begats") are less important to the message as a whole than others.
And I can compare the drunken posts of slashdot wit the divine word--both are communications that take considerbale effort to understand, and both bring considerable debate and discorse. The comparison doesn't go much past that, though.
I agree: the vast majority of the flock--of ANY flock--doesn't know the message. And neither do the vast majority of the shepards, all too many of which are sheep themselves.
The Bible is a key that holds "all that is needed for salvation." However, it's a journey that all (wo)men must take themselves--sticking to your faith on, well, blind faith won't get you to where you say you're going. Searching for things to base your faith on, and finding the answers to all those "dangerous questions," will.
OTOH, any church that doesn't think it's got the message 100% right isn't worthy of the name. If only they'd stop falling into the Istarian fallicy.
I think its asanine in its own way to believe that anyone could comprehend a entity that is powerful enough to creative the universe.
You acutally think that it is beyond the capabilities of God (an omnipotent being who created All and is able to hide himself from science) to cause us puny mortals to understand him?
I can respect the argument that He doesn't exist. I'll let slide the argument that we created Him. But I just can't comprehend the faulty logic that says that, if He exists, there's no was that we can understand Him.
For the record, Jeremy, I agree with you on a few points about religion. It's a way for God's shepards to tend to his flock. Some of us, though, are able to follow His way without a shepard--and for those few people, going to Church only makes sense if one acts like a shepard, not a sheep.
Hello. My name is Doug.
This is a post on slashdot.
There are many other posts on slashdot, just as there are many chapters in the bible. Some chapters have more relevance and importance that others--for example, chapters teaching directly are more important than chapters teaching the rationale, or the consequences of failure.
Within each chapter, as within each post, there are verses that are simply there to hold it together--and which can be toned down as not important for whole message.
****
Leaving biblical necessity behind, OF COURSE you have the right to ignore any part of the bible you want. You might not get into heaven, but you also might get there without ever opening up that book or hearing a single verse.
Free Will is something that man has, and that most of the modern world treasures very highly. What most people don't realize, though, is that Free Will is, at its most basic level, the ability to go against the words of authority and do the wrong thing.
Certain things can have consequences, be they damnation, the end of a friendship, or legal repurcussions, but the ability to choose between right or wrong, regarding the consequences as you will, is the very heart of free choice.
Those are some really loaded words. "Drug dealing" is outlawed in Colombia (due to US efforts). Terrorism in Iraq is illegal (blow up a building there and see what happens). I don't know, but I would hope that taking pictures of children in sexual positions is just as bad in China as it is in the US.
.08 (not illegal in my state), can your state police arrest me because it's illegal in their state?
.10 anyway) only applies to NY roads.
.05 drove in a state where that was not illegal, but their home state's DMV revoked the license of any child driving with any BAB, the child would, hypothetically, lose their driver's license.
Ok, so my examples weren't the best--but you do see the principle. When we arrest a drug dealer, a terrorist, or a peophile, we prosecute them under *our* laws, not the laws of their native country. When someone commits an act that affects the United States of America, and we have a law against just that act affecting us, we prosecute them. If the legislature's gone to far, the courts rule the new law unconstitutional and it's not a law any longer.
IANAL, of course, but here are my considerations of the points you made.
If a Colombian pharmacist dispensed morphine to a patient, but didn't follow US regulations, would we arrest him when he came to the US? If a Colombian storekeeper gave drugs to children, drugs which in the US require a prescription but which in Colombia don't, would we arrest him?
If they were US citizens, and we had a law against such behavior, yes. Especially if they came to the US and talked about it.
If an Iraqi citizen blew up a US building, he'd be on US soil, violating US law...of course we'd arrest him.
What if the Iraqi launched a missle from an Iraqi street against the US Embassy? He's on Iraqi soil, after all. Does that mean we can't touch him?
If any act can cause the government to hold someone (citizen or not) liable for what they do outside of the country, then the government can hold people liable for what they do outside of the country.
If a hypothetical Chinese photographer took pictures of babies without their clothes on because of a hypothetical custom of doing so to represent the babies' purity, should the photographer be arrested?
You can do that in the US, and it's not Child Pornography. If it's a picture of a sexually explicit pose of a child, you can't say "but children are so pure" and try to get away with it.
Nudity != pornography
If a hypothetical 19-year-old man married a hypothetical 14-year-old girl, with her consent, (because of a hypothetical tradition of fertile young women marrying virile young-but-older men), and if he took explicit pictures of her, for their own use and enjoyment, and if he behaved toward her as a man should behave toward his wife, would we arrest the man when he came to the US?,
Good bloody question. We might, and he could probably get out on appeal if we did.
A 19 year old CAN marry a 14 year old, even in the US. They might even be able to conjugate without violating NY's stautory rape laws.
If someone drives faster than 70 mph (the fastest legal speed in my state) on a Montana highway, can my state highway patrol arrest them?
Sure. The Highway patrol can arrest them for reckless driving, speeding, and potentially even harassing an officer ("obstruction of justice.") The police could arrest me right now for the murder of someone in Buffalo. The charges won't stick, but they can certainly charge me with the crime. If they're malice involved, I have recourse to sue them--which is a check that keeps them from arresting me just for the fun of it.
If I drive with a blood alcohol level of
Of course not. The NY law (which is, IIRC,
If a child with a BAB of
What if I wait until I'm sober, drive to your state, and then talk about driving almost-drunk in my state?
Unless there is a law against it, you've committed no crime.
The Age of Consent in NY is 17, but because the Statutory Rape law doesn't forbid a 16 year old and an 18 year old from getting it on, it's not a crime.
My point is simply that if something is NOT morally wrong (whatever that means to you), and if it is NOT illegal for a foreigner in their own land, and if NO ONE (except corporate attorneys) understands exactly what behavior constitutes a crime, then is it right to arrest foreigners for acts committed in their homeland, when they've violated no laws on US soil?
That's a loaded question.
No, it's not right for the law to hold someone to a wrong that is only a legal wrong, and not a clear ethical wrong when they have no way of reasonably knowing that the law will be applied to them.
However, it is right for the officers of the law to enforce it as it is written. That's doing their job, and they should be fired if they don't. Selective negligence to encourage following of the law is one thing; ignoring the law alltogether is something else.
Freedom and Democracy are not things that exist naturally in the wild. Like any other faucet of civilization, they require a certain level of institutions and traditions to floursih.
In the United States, we use our republic's democratically elected government to balance the freedoms of the many against the freedoms of the few. Somtimes, as with the DMCA, we mess up--but the fact is that we CAN mess up, and the system self-corrects us.
Yes, it's horrible that a Russian programmer was the first one nabbed under the DMCA. But if it wasn't him, it would have been someone else--and, until his trial is over, I'm wiling to give the courts the chance to fix the law that's gone to far.
The Courts fixed seperation in schools, line-item veto, and the legislature's scam against cannabis importation. They're a check on the other two branches, and I'm willing to let them have a crack at it before I'm "embarassed."
As for the jusisdictional part--the US would arrest a drug dealer from Columbia, a terrorist from Iraq, or a child pornographer from China. While the DMCA doesn't rise to the level of any of those crimes, it *IS* a crime, and the other three should be treated at least as well as a DMCA violator.
The "reasonable person" was taught in my paralegal classes as last as last semester--and it doesn't seem to be getting loose.
In addiontal to "common sense", a reasonable man never comits a tort, nor does he ever fail to read everything he agrees to, nor the instruciton manual of anything he gets.
A simple "warning, these are very succeptible to static electricty" would probably suffice for the PDAs, but then again, IANAL.
AFAIK, and IANAL, a person's estate can bring a suit on behalf of that person--including for libel, slander, theft, or (of course) wrongful death, among other things.
I think the root message is that you really can't cause damages (i.e., loss of money) to most dead people. If, say, you lied about a person during an interview with a big company that promised full pension to the widow if that person lived a good life, and on account of your lie she's out on the street, you can count on beign named in a lawsuit based on that lie.
Of course, if you're living, and I say something that doesn't cause you damages (for example, "user 36491 is a communist script kiddie") but no one believes it (because of context, or dismissing me as a flame/troll/loser) you really can't use me either.
(Sorry if the above upsets you, anyway. Also, thanks for the reply!)
Try calling, oh, Douglas Adams something that damages his memory. You'll get sued for libel by his estate.
Agreed 100%. :) mp3.com should have *no* liability for what its users did on Napster. That's like a convenience store being held liable because kids bought alcohol from him, and then went home to make moonshine. Sure, he *might* be guilty of selling to minors, but he's certainly not guilty of making moonshine!
As I see it, and as I think the courts & the lawyers (IANAL) see it, Napster was a store that hung a big sign in the window, "do illegal trafficing here", and then pretended that they didn't know about it.
There's a difference between the bartender who doesn't know that drugs are being traded in his restroom, and the bartender who gets the word out that he's a haven for dealers.
No, it's not a troll. But I see the rest of your point.
Listening to music is not a crime. Making a copy for yourself is not a crime. Making a copy for a good friend isn't much of a crime. But creating a business that just convinces people to swap those copies of music? According to the courts, that's a crime.
I'm no real fan of RIAA, and I would love to be able to get legal MP3s with cash heading right into the bands' pockets. But I can't... and the fact that I can't doesn't give me the right to steal a CD. Or to steal a song. And it *certainly* doesn't give me the right to set up a "file sharing" service that's geared almost exclusivly towards trading other people's livelihoods.
And that's what Napster did. Worse than that, they did it and then claimed that they *couldn't* stop it. They claimed that they couldn't try filters earlier, or that they couldn't expand Napster to more than music files. The court said "stop it anyway or you're out of business", and lo and behold Napster magically comes up with a plan to stop the music. Thus, they're held to tighter scrutiny.
The original post scoffed at the 100% of blockage requirement... all I was doing was noting that for a great many things in life, you've got 100% responsibility allready, even if the Courts don't enforce it on John Q. Public for lack of resources.
Think about it.
You must guarantee that, of all the people you encounter in a day, you do not kill, assault, steal from, or kill 100% of them. You must also guarantee that of everything you say, 100% of it is neither slander nor libel, nor someone else's work.
If you are a previous offender of any of these instances, the government assumes that you *can't* assume this by yourself, and you need to convince them that you can to get them off yoru back
You didn't license the music on that CD; you bought a copy. That means that you get use of the music on that CD based on copyright law.
And the Courts decided that file-sharing is *not* fair use. If you don't think so, talk to your congressman. (And if you're not in the US... well, then start up your own Napster!)
Any and all encryption / security device is just a deterrent. Someone who wants it bad enough will go out and get it.
Now, most people value their time, and there is a certain threshold where they'll just fess up and stop trying to crack something.
RIAA knows this, Microsoft knows this, and even the people who wrote the DMCA know this. (The DMCA just raises that bar for everyone... it's meant to make copying happen less often, not try and make it more difficult.)
All good points, save #1. Joe User had to learn that a link was a link, and that he needs to dial into the internet... Joe User can learn that a red squiggly line or a "smark tag box" is not the author's work.
... and a reason that if such a thing does exist, it needs to have some fairly standard settings.
Say, trademarks & dictionary lookups for multisyllabic words only? And only when it makes sense?
A crude example would be, say, a chat log. If someone were to just hand in an ASCI or HTML transcript of things that were said online, I dont see how that would be admissible evidence, since it only takes a word processessor and a little bit of time to forge/alter. Even with IP logging, THEN you have to proove that no one was spoofing the IP adress.
In the american courts, FACTS are determined by the Jury. Whether or not you were speeding. Whether or not OJ really did kill his wife. All determined by the Jury. For the most part, they simply sum it up as "yes he's guilty" or "no he's not", but to reach that the jury gets to listen to all of the evidence that the judge allows in, which is usualy just about anything that isn't an outright lie or illegally obtained.
Perjury is the crime of giving false testimony. To be convicted, you just need to give testimony in a trial, lie, and then have a DA take the time to convince a jury that you did so.
If you want to know more about the perjury laws, you might want to talk to a law school. If you're a US citizen, you can probably call up the local bar assocation (or the police) and, if they have time, they can probably point you towards someone who can explain the laws to you.
If you're not a US citizen, you might want to just dig around on the 'net, since US perjury laws will probably never affect you. Do a search on google for "US criminal laws" and you'll probably get a few descent hits.
And then of course, say some one dies from this and his/her family comes after me because I "recommended" the pills?
That would be taking the reasonable person standard to a new low.
1:) In every scheme I've heard of (thanks to privacy freaks, I can't actually *see* these things, even if I wanted to), the "inserted link" looks very much different than the web site. For IE, it was an office-like pop-up window, just like the shortcut window when you right-click. For this, it's a squiggly yellow line--the kind of line programs have been inserting into odd documents for their own reasons since Windows 95 came out.
2:) Nowhere did the hypothetical nutritionist say "go take these." In fact, she might have even linked to them to specificy the pills she DIDN'T want people taking.
3: If you are bothered by any of this, you can do any of the myriad options the providers offer for getting you site either de-tagged, or not linking to that one site.
This isn't a good thing. It's a thing that can be abused, but it's not a bad thing.
If I go out and buy a book, and then slap stickers all over the cover art, or tear out every third page, I can still sell it. Once I buy the books for me to sell, assuming no contracutal obligation to the contrary, I can do whatever I want with them ("first sale" doctrine) and then go out and sell them again. (Assuming I'm not making "derivitive works", but, well, that's a whole different ball of wax.)
I really don't get why there's such a community uproar over link-insertion--either this, or IE's Smart Tags. The whole friggin' interweb was founded on the idea of the hyperlink--that you click on a term, and it takes you to other like terms.
Yes, central control over this by one corporation (like MS) is bad. Certainly, add-driven scumbal LCD advertisers using this like the article states is bad.
But the idea itself is good. As long as users can turn it off (or rather, have to turn it on) or redirect who controls the darn thing, the dot.com mentality web designers can just grow up and learn to deal with it.
In any case, IANAL, and even if I was one you should never take legal advice from stangers on the internet, like me
Any special terms in your contract don't apply to those who aren't parties to that contract. (i.e., saying "you can't say "MS Sucks" in a contract doesn't make it so for everyone else)
Your lawyer might know of other laws that apply (say, copyright and patent laws), but the contract certainly won't stop them.
(Which is beside the matter... the hypotehtical SirCam victim didn't steal the document, he was sent it by your company's hardware.)
IANALBIPOOTI (I am not a lawyer but i play one on the internet)
never take legal advice from strangers on the internet. I am a stranger.
Expect video testimony to become useless in court cases... I mean, with a bit of photo work anyone can fake the gerky security camera footage--
No, wait. We already have laws that cover this. I think they're called perjury...