My submission was completely rewritten by the admin.
So was the pay-what-you-want part illegal? Is there a law that requires you to charge for music? Damn..
I think the point is that Radiohead wanted you to register with a credit card and get it from their site. I might be remembering incorrectly, but I think they wanted a minimum of 1 cent.
Regardless, just because a copyright holder doesn't charge money doesn't mean they cannot control other aspects of a work's use and distribution. Or have you not heard of a "GPL?"
As for myself, I think people need to buck up and stop taking offense when it was not intended. There is nothing offensive about Columbus making a navigational error and thinking he was in "West India."
What is offensive to me is false outrage, something the left specializes in.
Indians actually prefer to be called Indians, or by the name of their tribe, if that matters. I'd prefer to listen to them, rather than what guilty-feeling white liberals think I should say.
Besides, even the T Tex isn't really a native American. They walked here just like the Indians did. Indians just got here earlier than I did.
Destroying e-mail - something that used to be a good idea - can now be a crime even absent an active criminal investigation. For firms affected by Sarbanes-Oxley, you'd better comply with e-mail retention rules.
And for those of you libertarian-for-yourself, statist-for-big-companies types out there, this is what happens when the government pokes its nose into regulating business; they don't just make Microsoft's life miserable. All aspects of life and business will be intruded upon. That's just how Big Nanny works.
These left wing, anti-capitalist groups claim some tenuous link between a metal and African violence, or oil and terrorism. But a much more direct link is between the violent terror group FARC and the illegal drug trade.
But any reference to there being a moral imperative to obey drug laws sees to be missing from the Toward Freedom Website.
As has been said many times here over the years, if you don't like a product, don't buy it. Video games aren't medical care or food, so you sure don't need to buy them (hint: consider buying your family a book, or better yet, getting them outside to exercise). And EA didn't mislead, you knew they had DRM on it. So you are hostile at someone not misleading you trying to protect their product?
I've used no-CD cracks simply because I could. But cursing a company for trying to stop piracy? Waste of energy and misguided hostility. Vote with your pocketbook.
The US criminal justice system has several purposes: deterrence (specific and general), punishment, retribution, rehabilitation (incapacitation serves as all four, theoretically). US laws were originally founded in the Judeo-Christian tradition of English common law, which includes the idea of an eye for an eye.
The First Amendment came 170 years or so later to North America than did English common law.
I think if you asked any judge if punishment were part of his sentencing (which is called the "penalty phase" in many jurisdictions), he'd say you are quite wrong.
Don't make ad hominem attacks please. I called the article one-sided, and merely presented a legal analysis of his case. I did not "rationalize" or "glorify" him. Truth be told, I actually tend to dislike IT geeks. They tend to be rude and have no personality and think they are smarter than everyone (which is usually not the case) and believe they are God's gift to an organization. Such attitudes should not be tolerated, regardless of how skilled an IT guy is.
With that said, government organizations tend to take a lowest common denominator attitude with IT departments. They don't pay shit, so the cheapest guy gets hired, often resembling a DMV employee. So I can see how a guy could get possessive about his network. He must know what the average city employee is like: Under-trained, bad attitude, and can't be fired due to unions.
He's certainly guilty of being a bad employee, as well as affirming all of those user-unfriendly IT sterotypes (those are often true, BTW). But criminal?
In America, they have to prove that first. Looking at the statute, it seems it all comes down to the issue of "without permission." The main point the article makes is that he might have had at least understood or standing permission to do most or all of what he did. Just like when you take your parents' car somewhere as a teenager, it isn't theft if it's understood that you are allowed to use it.
The article is one-sided, and his alleged refusal to give up the passwords looks bad (perhaps he is remaining silent until he speaks with counsel), but proving he didn't have permission might be hard. Ergo, no criminal.
502. (a) It is the intent of the Legislature in enacting this
section to expand the degree of protection afforded to individuals,
businesses, and governmental agencies from tampering, interference,
damage, and unauthorized access to lawfully created computer data and
computer systems. The Legislature finds and declares that the
proliferation of computer technology has resulted in a concomitant
proliferation of computer crime and other forms of unauthorized
access to computers, computer systems, and computer data.
The Legislature further finds and declares that protection of the
integrity of all types and forms of lawfully created computers,
computer systems, and computer data is vital to the protection of the
privacy of individuals as well as to the well-being of financial
institutions, business concerns, governmental agencies, and others
within this state that lawfully utilize those computers, computer
systems, and data.
(b) For the purposes of this section, the following terms have the
following meanings:
(1) "Access" means to gain entry to, instruct, or communicate with
the logical, arithmetical, or memory function resources of a
computer, computer system, or computer network.
(2) "Computer network" means any system that provides
communications between one or more computer systems and input/output
devices including, but not limited to, display terminals and printers
connected by telecommunication facilities.
(3) "Computer program or software" means a set of instructions or
statements, and related data, that when executed in actual or
modified form, cause a computer, computer system, or computer network
to perform specified functions.
(4) "Computer services" includes, but is not limited to, computer
time, data processing, or storage functions, or other uses of a
computer, computer system, or computer network.
(5) "Computer system" means a device or collection of devices,
including support devices and excluding calculators that are not
programmable and capable of being used in conjunction with external
files, one or more of which contain computer programs, electronic
instructions, input data, and output data, that performs functions
including, but not limited to, logic, arithmetic, data storage and
retrieval, communication, and control.
(6) "Data" means a representation of information, knowledge,
facts, concepts, computer software, computer programs or
instructions. Data may be in any form, in storage media, or as
stored in the memory of the computer or in transit or presented on a
display device.
(7) "Supporting documentation" includes, but is not limited to,
all information, in any form, pertaining to the design, construction,
classification, implementation, use, or modification of a computer,
computer system, computer network, computer program, or computer
software, which information is not generally available to the public
and is necessary for the operation of a computer, computer system,
computer network, computer program, or computer software.
(8) "Injury" means any alteration, deletion, damage, or
destruction of a computer system, computer network, computer program,
or data caused by the access, or the denial of access to legitimate
users of a computer system, network, or program.
(9) "Victim expenditure" means any expenditure reasonably and
necessarily incurred by the owner or lessee to verify that a computer
system, computer network, computer program, or data was or was not
altered, deleted, damaged, or destroyed by the access.
(10) "Computer contaminant" means any set of computer instructions
that are designed to modify, damage, destroy, record, or transmit
information within a computer, computer system, or computer network
without the intent or permission of the owner of the information.
They include, but are not limited to, a group of computer
instructions commonly called viruses or worms, that are
self-replicating or self-propagating and are designed to co
Why do think that anecdotal behavior of children who exist in the current system of social conditioning somehow proves that social conditioning does not exist?
It is not anecdotal. Ask any parent for God's sake, or any day care worker. Men and women have genetic and hormonal differences. Have you never even met a woman before? How can you even argue this?
When in a large group together, all the boys do one thing and all the girls do another thing, sure seems like a strong argument for the existence of social conditioning
It is also a strong argument for explaining to you the difference between correlation and causation.
that girl who wants to run around and raise hell is shamed into behaving like a good little girl and that boy who wants tuck his firetruck into bed is laughed at.
Surely you have no kids and do not work around them. Put your slide rule and feminist studies book away, and go take a day care worker to lunch and ask her what she (yes, she, since they rarely let men work at such places - so much for men conditioning these stereotypes!) has to say about innate differences. Then you'll see what it's like to be laughed at.
does it say foreign intercepts require warrants? My reading of the Bill of Rights - as a lawyer and political science professor - is that the Fourth Amendment is a criminal procedure protection, not something designed to regulate intelligence gathering.
But you are right - Congress encroaching the President's inherent powers with a mere law (rather than constitutional amendment) could be considered unconstitutional, just as the War powers Act likely is.
I was told when I was in your place, in college, in the heyday of certain ideas in the late â60s, that âoestudies showâ that boys and girls are not inherently different, they differ only because parents give boys guns and give girls dolls. So the dummies who believed that âoestudies showâ that boys and girls are essentially the same decided to raise their boys with dolls and their girls with trucks. And what happened? The boys broke the dollsâ(TM) arms, and the girls cuddled the trucks.
Women are less interested than men in sports as a general rule. A lot of schools have to beg women to join teams just to try to get "equity." Of course most Americans believe in equality of opportunity, not outcome, the latter smacking of Marx.
Just as female fashion models make a lot more than their male counterparts, college (and pro) sports are gender driven. Nobody is suggesting that there be affirmative action for male models.
And spare me this silly "society makes the genders different" nonsense. There are innate differences between the sexes! Go to a fourth grader's birthday party and see. The boys are raising hell and the girls are sitting around talking. Give a little boy a doll, he burns it or rips off the head. Give a little girl a firetruck, she names it and puts it to bed.
Men and women are different, deal with that inconvenient truth. Different DOES NOT MEAN unequal.
You said you believe in "rule of law." The DMCA is law. If you think it is okay to violate laws you don't like (which, granted, you haven't admitted, but a lot of people here seem to think it is okay to do), but want to hold telcos responsible for laws you do like, that would be hypocrisy on your part, not a fallacy on my part.
Simply because you don't like my argument doesn't make it fallacious.
As for your link to inductive reasoning, quite the contrary, I was quite deductive:
Major premise: Rule of law is important.
Minor premise: DMCA is law
Conclusion: You must follow DMCA (and if you don't like it, change it, just as Congress changed the FISA rules).
Companies capitulated in the face of jingoist rhetoric and executive branch shenanigans, essentially offering up constitutional protections with barely a peep.
Last time I checked, FISA is a law made by Congress, not a constitutional amendment (sorry, the Fourth Amendment is about domestic criminal cases, not foreign surveillance). Personally, I question the very constitutionality of the FISA law itself. Congress cannot limit the inherent powers of another branch, short of a constitutional amendment.
Okay, you don't believe the president has such inherent wartime powers, but I and Jefferson and Lincoln and FDR - and even Clinton in the FBI spying case - would disagree. But apparently here, if you disagree with a Slashdot meme, you are a traitor, or a "weasly (sic) little maggot coward."
Ah, the irony of making such attacks on people for merely disagreeing with you in a thread about civil liberties.
I happen to believe that companies acting in good faith to help after 9/11, and who were given assurances that they would be immune from legal sanction, should in fact be immune from legal sanction.
I feel reasonable minds can disagree on matters of public policy. But to you I am a traitor?
What is the standard for flamebait here anyway? I am confused.
How convenient. The liberal mainstream media ignores the Pelosi/Fairness Doctrine story, then you complain that only "rightwing" (I guess Investor's Business Daily is now equal to Rush Limbaugh) news outlets report on it. How convenient!
Shoot the messenger all you want. The fact is, Pelosi has been quoted. Are you disputing these quotes?
At a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor yesterday, I asked Pelosi if Pence failed to get the required signatures on a discharge petition to get his anti-Fairness Doctrine bill out of committee, would she permit the Pence measure to get a floor vote this year.
"No," the Speaker replied, without hesitation. She added that "the interest in my caucus is the reverse" and that New York Democratic Rep. "Louise Slaughter has been active behind this [revival of the Fairness Doctrine] for a while now."
Pelosi pointed out that, after it returns from its Fourth of July recess, the House will only meet for another three weeks in July and three weeks in the fall. There are a lot of bills it has to deal with before adjournment, she said, such as FISA and an energy bill.
"So I don't see it [the Pence bill] coming to the floor," Pelosi said.
"Do you personally support revival of the âFairness Doctrine?'" I asked.
Such as, the FISA process is slow, and actionable intelligence might require real-time speed. What if bin Laden is on the phone right now, with a throw-away cell? By the time you can get a FISA warrant, he's hung up and thrown the phone away. Opportunity lost.
Of course, this is silly anyway, since we didn't need warrants for the Nazis or the North Koreans or the NVA.
Slashdot Mirror
My submission was completely rewritten by the admin.
So was the pay-what-you-want part illegal? Is there a law that requires you to charge for music? Damn..
I think the point is that Radiohead wanted you to register with a credit card and get it from their site. I might be remembering incorrectly, but I think they wanted a minimum of 1 cent.
Regardless, just because a copyright holder doesn't charge money doesn't mean they cannot control other aspects of a work's use and distribution. Or have you not heard of a "GPL?"
As for myself, I think people need to buck up and stop taking offense when it was not intended. There is nothing offensive about Columbus making a navigational error and thinking he was in "West India."
What is offensive to me is false outrage, something the left specializes in.
By your, umm, logic, hardly anyone on the planet merits a description as a native resident.
Precisely. Calling anyone "native" is an idiotic PC formulation. As for who got here first, who the hell cares?
Indians actually prefer to be called Indians, or by the name of their tribe, if that matters. I'd prefer to listen to them, rather than what guilty-feeling white liberals think I should say.
Besides, even the T Tex isn't really a native American. They walked here just like the Indians did. Indians just got here earlier than I did.
Destroying e-mail - something that used to be a good idea - can now be a crime even absent an active criminal investigation. For firms affected by Sarbanes-Oxley, you'd better comply with e-mail retention rules.
And for those of you libertarian-for-yourself, statist-for-big-companies types out there, this is what happens when the government pokes its nose into regulating business; they don't just make Microsoft's life miserable. All aspects of life and business will be intruded upon. That's just how Big Nanny works.
These left wing, anti-capitalist groups claim some tenuous link between a metal and African violence, or oil and terrorism. But a much more direct link is between the violent terror group FARC and the illegal drug trade.
But any reference to there being a moral imperative to obey drug laws sees to be missing from the Toward Freedom Website.
As has been said many times here over the years, if you don't like a product, don't buy it. Video games aren't medical care or food, so you sure don't need to buy them (hint: consider buying your family a book, or better yet, getting them outside to exercise). And EA didn't mislead, you knew they had DRM on it. So you are hostile at someone not misleading you trying to protect their product?
I've used no-CD cracks simply because I could. But cursing a company for trying to stop piracy? Waste of energy and misguided hostility. Vote with your pocketbook.
A burglar drops his gun on the way out of your house. You pick it up and use it to defend against other burglars. Ha ha.
The US criminal justice system has several purposes: deterrence (specific and general), punishment, retribution, rehabilitation (incapacitation serves as all four, theoretically). US laws were originally founded in the Judeo-Christian tradition of English common law, which includes the idea of an eye for an eye.
The First Amendment came 170 years or so later to North America than did English common law.
I think if you asked any judge if punishment were part of his sentencing (which is called the "penalty phase" in many jurisdictions), he'd say you are quite wrong.
What about fluoride filters for the generals' water? Did you ever think of that?
Don't make ad hominem attacks please. I called the article one-sided, and merely presented a legal analysis of his case. I did not "rationalize" or "glorify" him. Truth be told, I actually tend to dislike IT geeks. They tend to be rude and have no personality and think they are smarter than everyone (which is usually not the case) and believe they are God's gift to an organization. Such attitudes should not be tolerated, regardless of how skilled an IT guy is.
With that said, government organizations tend to take a lowest common denominator attitude with IT departments. They don't pay shit, so the cheapest guy gets hired, often resembling a DMV employee. So I can see how a guy could get possessive about his network. He must know what the average city employee is like: Under-trained, bad attitude, and can't be fired due to unions.
He's certainly guilty of being a bad employee, as well as affirming all of those user-unfriendly IT sterotypes (those are often true, BTW). But criminal?
In America, they have to prove that first. Looking at the statute, it seems it all comes down to the issue of "without permission." The main point the article makes is that he might have had at least understood or standing permission to do most or all of what he did. Just like when you take your parents' car somewhere as a teenager, it isn't theft if it's understood that you are allowed to use it.
The article is one-sided, and his alleged refusal to give up the passwords looks bad (perhaps he is remaining silent until he speaks with counsel), but proving he didn't have permission might be hard. Ergo, no criminal.
Just ask any parent.
Why do think that anecdotal behavior of children who exist in the current system of social conditioning somehow proves that social conditioning does not exist?
It is not anecdotal. Ask any parent for God's sake, or any day care worker. Men and women have genetic and hormonal differences. Have you never even met a woman before? How can you even argue this?
When in a large group together, all the boys do one thing and all the girls do another thing, sure seems like a strong argument for the existence of social conditioning
It is also a strong argument for explaining to you the difference between correlation and causation.
that girl who wants to run around and raise hell is shamed into behaving like a good little girl and that boy who wants tuck his firetruck into bed is laughed at.
Surely you have no kids and do not work around them. Put your slide rule and feminist studies book away, and go take a day care worker to lunch and ask her what she (yes, she, since they rarely let men work at such places - so much for men conditioning these stereotypes!) has to say about innate differences. Then you'll see what it's like to be laughed at.
does it say foreign intercepts require warrants? My reading of the Bill of Rights - as a lawyer and political science professor - is that the Fourth Amendment is a criminal procedure protection, not something designed to regulate intelligence gathering.
But you are right - Congress encroaching the President's inherent powers with a mere law (rather than constitutional amendment) could be considered unconstitutional, just as the War powers Act likely is.
From Advice from the Counterculture by Dennis Prager:
I was told when I was in your place, in college, in the heyday of certain ideas in the late â60s, that âoestudies showâ that boys and girls are not inherently different, they differ only because parents give boys guns and give girls dolls. So the dummies who believed that âoestudies showâ that boys and girls are essentially the same decided to raise their boys with dolls and their girls with trucks. And what happened? The boys broke the dollsâ(TM) arms, and the girls cuddled the trucks.
Women are less interested than men in sports as a general rule. A lot of schools have to beg women to join teams just to try to get "equity." Of course most Americans believe in equality of opportunity, not outcome, the latter smacking of Marx.
Just as female fashion models make a lot more than their male counterparts, college (and pro) sports are gender driven. Nobody is suggesting that there be affirmative action for male models.
And spare me this silly "society makes the genders different" nonsense. There are innate differences between the sexes! Go to a fourth grader's birthday party and see. The boys are raising hell and the girls are sitting around talking. Give a little boy a doll, he burns it or rips off the head. Give a little girl a firetruck, she names it and puts it to bed.
Men and women are different, deal with that inconvenient truth. Different DOES NOT MEAN unequal.
Two giant leaps for libertarians.
That is what everyone here claims to be, come FISA and DMCA time, right?
You said you believe in "rule of law." The DMCA is law. If you think it is okay to violate laws you don't like (which, granted, you haven't admitted, but a lot of people here seem to think it is okay to do), but want to hold telcos responsible for laws you do like, that would be hypocrisy on your part, not a fallacy on my part.
Simply because you don't like my argument doesn't make it fallacious.
As for your link to inductive reasoning, quite the contrary, I was quite deductive:
Major premise: Rule of law is important.
Minor premise: DMCA is law
Conclusion: You must follow DMCA (and if you don't like it, change it, just as Congress changed the FISA rules).
Companies capitulated in the face of jingoist rhetoric and executive branch shenanigans, essentially offering up constitutional protections with barely a peep.
Last time I checked, FISA is a law made by Congress, not a constitutional amendment (sorry, the Fourth Amendment is about domestic criminal cases, not foreign surveillance). Personally, I question the very constitutionality of the FISA law itself. Congress cannot limit the inherent powers of another branch, short of a constitutional amendment.
Okay, you don't believe the president has such inherent wartime powers, but I and Jefferson and Lincoln and FDR - and even Clinton in the FBI spying case - would disagree. But apparently here, if you disagree with a Slashdot meme, you are a traitor, or a "weasly (sic) little maggot coward."
Ah, the irony of making such attacks on people for merely disagreeing with you in a thread about civil liberties.
Copyright law is actually mentioned in the Constitution. Do you believe in that rule of law, or just laws you agree with?
I happen to believe that companies acting in good faith to help after 9/11, and who were given assurances that they would be immune from legal sanction, should in fact be immune from legal sanction.
I feel reasonable minds can disagree on matters of public policy. But to you I am a traitor?
What is the standard for flamebait here anyway? I am confused.
How convenient. The liberal mainstream media ignores the Pelosi/Fairness Doctrine story, then you complain that only "rightwing" (I guess Investor's Business Daily is now equal to Rush Limbaugh) news outlets report on it. How convenient!
Shoot the messenger all you want. The fact is, Pelosi has been quoted. Are you disputing these quotes?
At a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor yesterday, I asked Pelosi if Pence failed to get the required signatures on a discharge petition to get his anti-Fairness Doctrine bill out of committee, would she permit the Pence measure to get a floor vote this year.
"No," the Speaker replied, without hesitation. She added that "the interest in my caucus is the reverse" and that New York Democratic Rep. "Louise Slaughter has been active behind this [revival of the Fairness Doctrine] for a while now."
Pelosi pointed out that, after it returns from its Fourth of July recess, the House will only meet for another three weeks in July and three weeks in the fall. There are a lot of bills it has to deal with before adjournment, she said, such as FISA and an energy bill.
"So I don't see it [the Pence bill] coming to the floor," Pelosi said.
"Do you personally support revival of the âFairness Doctrine?'" I asked.
"Yes," the speaker replied, without hesitation. http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=27185
Pelosi's support for the revival of the Fairness Doctrine, aka "Hush Rush" bill, has been widely reported. Google is your friend.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=27185
Yahoo News search on "fairness doctrine"
Such as, the FISA process is slow, and actionable intelligence might require real-time speed. What if bin Laden is on the phone right now, with a throw-away cell? By the time you can get a FISA warrant, he's hung up and thrown the phone away. Opportunity lost.
Of course, this is silly anyway, since we didn't need warrants for the Nazis or the North Koreans or the NVA.