What if people could sue free software authors directly? That would be scary.
No kidding. Consider how thoroughly medical proffessionals have been ass-fucked by lawyers...
How much does medical liability insurance cost? A. Insurance premiums for emergency physicians grew on average by more than 50 percent from 2002 to 2003 to $53,500 (AMA 2003), with some paying more than $100,000 annually. Other medical specialists, such as neurosurgeons and OB-GYNs pay $200,000 to $300,000 annually.
...and be thanful it hasn't happened the IT industry - yet. Most doctors would be better off being taxed by the mafia than having to pay this lawyer tax.
I have no intention of defending NEC in this case, and I hope they get what they deserve in the end as well, but you are far too willing to let Desmond McQuoid off the hook. He was a government official charged with looking out for the public interest but he was caught stuffing public money into his own pockets. He fully deserves to go to prison for a very long time.
In democracies like the US it has always been the practice to deal most harshly with any government officials that are engaged in corruption. And that is the way it should be.
Public property is specifically the target of the first amendment. Companies can and should be allowed to limit what is done in their facilities, however, the government cannot do the same with speech.
You are quite wrong about that. The government has many of the same powers to limit the speech of its employees and the use of government property that any other employer or property owner has. Even more in some cases.
The law is complicated in this sort of case (but you can start here if you are interested). But the short version is that libraries can say whatever they like with their own money. If they take money from the government then the government gets to have a say in what gets done with it.
If you are right, then the government can forbid you to be on public land because of any opinion you voice they deem unacceptable.
The law draws a number of distinctions between different types of public property. In this case it isn't so much a matter of who owns the property (that applies more in the school case) as one of the conditions that can be attached to a subsidy.
You can get the government position on the detention of "enemy combatants" here. You can get the law authorizing military tribunals to try "unlawful combatants" here, and the introductory speech here. Procedures for obtaining an early release are described here.
I'm not surprised that you couldn't find much on the web about the distnction between enemy combatants and unlawful combatants. Most of the news coverage focuses on enemy combatants who have been acused of being unlawful combatants, so the distinction is seldom made clear.
Censorship is when the state prevents certain things from being said or heard. Limiting what can be seen on the web in libraries and schools does neither. It merely limits what you can see in those particular places. Until schools and libraries become the only conduits of information this is not going to amount to censorship any more than when a company bans pornopgraphy from the work-place. People have a right to make and see erotica, but they don't have a right to do it on someone elses property (or government property), and they don't have a right to do it someone else's dime (not even the taxpayers dime).
Libraries and schools shouldn't be supported by the government, anyway.
I think there is still some confusion here that needs to be cleared up. There are four legal status that a prisoner might fall into.
(1) Enemy combatant. (2) Enemy combatant and war criminal. (3) Unlawful combatant. (4) Civillian.
When a prisoner is taken they are regarded as (1), an enemy combatant, by default. That is the status that the military merely has to provide an affidavit to support. As long as he retains that status the prisoner get the rights of a POW, and can be held until the end of the war. To convict the prisoner of either being (2), a war criminal, or (3), and unlawful combatant, the military has to prove his guilt at a military tribunal (i.e. a trial). A military tribunal can also determine that a prisoner is a civillian and release him before the end of the war (or turn him over to the civillian authorities if he is suspected of being civillian criminal).
So, no one acquires the status of (3), an unlawful combatant, or (2), a war criminal, just at the say-so of the military. That is something that has to be established at trial.
Prisoners do acquire the status of (1), an enemy combatant, at the say-so of the military but, if military personel are found to have lied on the affidavit establishing that status they can be punished, and the status of "enemy combatant" is not like the status of "criminal" under civillian law. It actually carries many priviliges and immunities that are not available to civillian prisoners. So it is not such a bad position to wind up in.
If the military is told that they must prove, promptly and beyond a reasonable doubt, that every captured prisoner is at least an enemy combatant, then the result will be that the military will stop taking prisoners. Anyone who looks like they might be an enemy combatant will be shot on the battlefield. That is why the laws of war work the way they do. Yes, it is realatively easy for civillians to get swept up as a POWs, but being a POW is not that bad, and it sure beats being gunned down on the spot.
The recent "WMDs" could very well have been brought in from elsewhere.
Maybe. But they look like Iraqi designs, and it is unlikely that the insurgents would bring in WMDs from another country only to waste them by using them improperly. The sarin gas artillery shell that was found recently was used as a roadside bomb - a use for which it was entirely unsuited. Weapons like that have very little explosive power, and produce very little nerve gas if they are simply detonated. Which suggests that the insurgents retrieved the weapon from a stockpile hidden locally, and that they didn't know that they had a WMD.
And what about netnanny and other censorship software in public schools and libraries?
Both strike me as dumb ideas, but neither strike me as censorship. The government has always had the right to limit what children can read or see on school time, and it has always had the right to attach strings to government money.
You keep on ignoring the fact that the military can (and obviously does) make mistakes.
That is always true of any individual, institution, or authority - so it isn't much of an objection.
Apparently, these "unlawful combatants" can remain at Guantanamo for an indefinite period of time.
If it is determined by a tribunal (i.e. by a military court) that a particular prisoner is an "unlawful combatant" then that prisoner will probably be executed. They certainly won't be held indefinitely. Same goes for those found guilty of war crimes (although a prison term is an option). Prisoners who are merely considered "enemy combatants" can be held until the end of the war. That is the way it has always worked with POWs.
What if some are innocent?
Innocent? Do you mean "what if they were not combatants?" Then it is fortunate that they were taken prisoner instead of being shot on the battlefield - which is what will happen if the military is forced to release every prisoner taken.
Since they don't get a trial, how the hell is anyone going to find out if the military was lying or not?
What difference would a trial for the prisoner make? Any prosecution for falsifying an affidavit would be a seperate legal proceeding.
Also, all the military has to do, if I'm not mistaken, is SUSPECT them of being "unlawful combatants".
You are mistaken. Whether or not they are "unlawful combatants" is something that will have to be determined by a military tribunal. For prisoners taken in a war zone, outside of the US, the government must provide a sworn affidavit confirming the claim that they are "enemy combatants". That just means that they get treated like POWs and go through the military legal system, rather than the civillian legal system.
And, BTW, it would be a violation of the laws of war to turn POWs over to the civillian legal system.
No you are missing the point. The rights of a POW are *not* human rights. They are legal benefits granted in return for compliance with the laws of war. Since when was it a human right to be free from prosecution for killing innocent people? Yet that is one of the rights granted to POWs.
Just because there are no legal rights guarenteed to "illegal combatants" (ones held by illegal captors?) that does not mean they shouldn't be entitled the same fair treatment that a POW or a criminal captured in the US would be given.
Actually it does mean that. POW status includes a number of benefits and immunities that are granteed in return for obeying the laws of war. To grant those benefits and immunities to people who deliberately break the laws of war would be to reward people for such violations. That would itself be a reprehensible act.
The US took down a fair amount of websites that were a "threat" to national security.
Really? Which ones? The government took some of its own records off line. But that is its perogative.
You will get arrested if you say the wrong (albiet stupid) things in the west (such as shouting "BOMB" at a station).
And how exectly is that censorship, let alone "not much better than" executing people for saying the wrong thing?
There seems to have been no solid evidence...
What do you mean "seems to be"? You mean in hindsight? Or the way it looked at the time? They had satelite pictures showing activity at known WMD sites, signal intercepts of communications about WMDs, and eye-witness accounts of WMDs. The eye-wittnesses still say that they saw WMDs.
The only thing lacking, until recently, was some actual WMDs, and of course there was no way to get those without a search.
As I said the US is entitled to hold them prisoner whether they are unlawful combatants or POWs. The US government is currently organising legal proceedings that will determine which prisoners are unlawful combatants or war criminals. In the meantime they are being treated as POWs.
You say most of the prisoners ("Unlawful Combatants") were captured on the battlefield firing at US soldiers, etc etc. How can you know this if there is no trial?
Because the US military says that is how and where they were taken prisoner, and in each case someone in the military has sworn an affidavit to that effect. If it turns out later that they were lying then they can go to prison for it. To my mind that makes the word of the US military a whole lot more reliable than its critics - who have a constitutional right to tell whatever lies their fevered imaginations can make up.
The US (the people and the government) is pretty sensitive to critism.
I'm not American, but I have been living in the US for some years now. I don't particularly like living here, and I intend to leave when I am finished with my studies. That said I have noticed two things since moving here...
(1) Americans, and especially the American press, are pathologically self-critical. Every problem in the entire world is viewed as somehow the result of either US action or inaction. I think this is partly a result of the American tendancy to view the US as the center of the world.
(2) When non-Americans, or at least people who have never lived here, criticise the US they usually display a stunning degree of ignorance about what the US is like, what it has done, and why. Of course Americans who have never lived abroard also display a stunning degree of ignorance about the rest of the world. But there is a difference. Most Americans are aware of their own ignorance about the rest of the world, where as the rest of the world seems to think that it knows America. I think that this is probably because of the dominance of American media. People see a lot of the fictional America that exists in TV shows and movies, and they confuse that with the non-fictional America.
Anyway, speculation aside, I don't think Americans are overly sensitive to criticism. But a lot of them are sick of the BS, totally-divorced-from-reality, criticism that they hear from people outside of the US.
Ha ha. Since when did spreading anti-US lies cost anyone karma on/.?
Although this is not banning or censoring, strictly speaking, the Bush administration and the corporate media is not much better than its Chinese equivalents.
Not much better? The Chinese government regularly imprisons people for decades at a time for publishing anything that it does not like, or even for such mundane activities as collecting newspaper clippings. Sometimes it even executes people for saying the wrong thing. So what exaclty has the Bush administration or the "corporate media" done which is "not much better" than killing people for speaking freely?
They distorted the facts about the real reason for the Iraqi war -- the claim that there were WMD were at best speculative, and at worst plain lies.
Every western intelligence agency believed that Iraq had WMDs - including the French and German intelligence agencies. The Clinton administration believed that Iraq had WMDs and took military action against Iraq on that basis. Polticians from both the Republican and Democratic parties who saw the intelligence available believed that Iraq had WMDs. In fact some prominent Democrats, like Senator Bob Kerrey, argued for invading Iraq, for that reason, even before 9/11. The Kay report, stated that Saddam Hussein himself appeared to think that he had WMDs, and that the officier core of the Republican Guard also believed that some of their units were equiped with WMDs. Recently a nerve gas weapon was even found in Iraq. If the evidence was "speculative" then one hell of a lot of people were persuaded by it. If the Bush administration was lying then it was telling the same lies as a whole lot of other people.
Everyone was surprised when the WMDs turned out to be either harder to find, or scarcer than expected. But trying to claim, after the fact, that the evidence was "speculative" or that the Bush administration was lying, is itself a blatant and dispicable lie.
The US surely can't point fingers at China for not upholding the basic human rights. The imprisonment of many people in Guantanamo Bay with no trial, no evidence,...
There are two views of the status of the prisoners at Guantanamo. Either they are POWs or they are unlawful combatants. If they are POWs then it would be illegal to try them for anything other than war crimes, and they may be held until the end of the war (and needless to say the war ain't over). If they are illegal combatants then they have no rights under international law.
So explain again what basic human rights are being violated here?
and for basically no real reason other than show the right-wing voters (who sadly seems to be the majority of US voters) that "we're doing something about terrorism".
Most of the prisoners at Guantanamo were captured on the battlefield, with weapons, while they were trying to kill Americans. Is that your idea of "basically no reason"?
Under current law there is no need to show damages in a copyright infringement suit. Copyright owners are automatically entitled to "statutory" damages if they can prove infringement.
There is a great deal of "wiggle room" with respect to what the court "considers just," and in 1999, Congress increased the amounts. In cases in which the plaintiff cannot prove that the infringement was "willful," the Copyright Act allows a sum of "not less than $750 or more than $30,000" per infringement. However, if the court finds that the defendant's behavior was "willful," the court has discretion "to increase the award of statutory damages to a sum of not more than $150,000" per infringement.
So that is a minimum of $750 for every instance of infringment, even if it was not willful (i.e. even if you did not realise that you were infringing). That should give you some idea of why the people getting sued by the RIAA are all caving so easily. Even at $750 per mp3 (if they are lucky) the statutory damages can add up real fast.
There are plenty of civil remidies for copyright holders already.
Hmm... Well there are a lot of people who think that copyright is doomed because in this digital age there is no way to stop copyright infringement. But isn't that just another way of saying that there are no effective remedies for copyright holders?
I think it would be more plausible to argue that this new measure will be just as futile as existing measures, rather than trying to argue that existing measures are already effective.
There's a lot of redundant, unenforcable bloatlaw in there.
There is no bloatlaw from the government's point of view. Everybody is guilty of something. If they want to get you, it's just a matter of figuring out what that something is.
They can still claim damages for past use of the trademark. In fact they can claim damages, any profits made under the Lindows name, and legal costs. Given the potentially immense value of the Windows trademark, damages due to dilution, confusion in the market, or tarnishment (etc), could amount to a very big pile of money.
In the USA anyway, you are presumed innocent until proven guilty.
That is only true in criminal trials, and not always true even then. Copyright is civil matter, so the standard is usually "on the balance of the evidence". If one side can produce a pile of documents relating to the development of some code, and the other side can only produce a guy who says "I wrote it" then it is a pretty safe bet that the side with all the ducuments will win.
Sound stupid? Welcome to the wacky world of intellectual property.
Kerry neither beat the drums of war like Alcibiades nor ran the invasion like Nicias.
I didn't compare him with Alcibiades, and the fact that he is not running thngs yet is beside the point.
Nicias was no pansy. He had fought bravely as a yonger man, and had even proven to be a competent military leader. He was also widely admired for his other qualities. The problem was that he was opposed to the war and the expedition, yet he was unwilling to withdraw and bring the Athenians home. As a result he was unwilling to fight his way through, or take the heat for backing out.
Kerry appears to be in exactly the same position. He does not believe in the aims of the war, but neither is he willing to say that he will withdraw.
If the war is going to be fought effectively then the US needs a leader who wants to fight the war, and who believes in the aims of the war. If the US is going to pull out then it needs a leader who is willing to bring the troops home immediately before more lives wasted. What the US does not need is a leader like Kerry who neither believes in the cause, nor is willing to abandon it.
In the period you are talking about Iceland didn't exactly have a government. It did have laws, and there were democratic elements to the way things worked, but because there was no government it is usually called an anarchy. Anyway, it was not a modern democracy. They did not have universal sufferage or representative government, or any of the other features of modern democracy.
There were other democracies around before the US, and after the classical period though. Switzerland, and Republican Venice for example. But neither were modern democracies.
Military participation was generally limited to the wealthier citizens...
Not so in the case of Athens. From the battle of Salamis onwards Athens depended on her Navy, and on the rowers who powered its ships. In fact that is one of the reasons why Athens adopted a democratic system that included all male citizens - even the poor.
...and war aims were generally limited, stopping far short of conquest or delenda-est-Carthago extremes.
That was true prior to Alexander the Great. Not true after.
The ancient Greeks were the first technophiles (want to guess what language that word is derived from?). They also invented the study of logic. I think that has something to do with programing doesn't it?
Slashdot Mirror
No kidding. Consider how thoroughly medical proffessionals have been ass-fucked by lawyers...
I have no intention of defending NEC in this case, and I hope they get what they deserve in the end as well, but you are far too willing to let Desmond McQuoid off the hook. He was a government official charged with looking out for the public interest but he was caught stuffing public money into his own pockets. He fully deserves to go to prison for a very long time.
In democracies like the US it has always been the practice to deal most harshly with any government officials that are engaged in corruption. And that is the way it should be.
Public property is specifically the target of the first amendment. Companies can and should be allowed to limit what is done in their facilities, however, the government cannot do the same with speech.
You are quite wrong about that. The government has many of the same powers to limit the speech of its employees and the use of government property that any other employer or property owner has. Even more in some cases.
The law is complicated in this sort of case (but you can start here if you are interested). But the short version is that libraries can say whatever they like with their own money. If they take money from the government then the government gets to have a say in what gets done with it.
If you are right, then the government can forbid you to be on public land because of any opinion you voice they deem unacceptable.
The law draws a number of distinctions between different types of public property. In this case it isn't so much a matter of who owns the property (that applies more in the school case) as one of the conditions that can be attached to a subsidy.
You can get the government position on the detention of "enemy combatants" here.
You can get the law authorizing military tribunals to try "unlawful combatants" here, and the introductory speech here.
Procedures for obtaining an early release are described here.
I'm not surprised that you couldn't find much on the web about the distnction between enemy combatants and unlawful combatants. Most of the news coverage focuses on enemy combatants who have been acused of being unlawful combatants, so the distinction is seldom made clear.
Censorship is when the state prevents certain things from being said or heard. Limiting what can be seen on the web in libraries and schools does neither. It merely limits what you can see in those particular places. Until schools and libraries become the only conduits of information this is not going to amount to censorship any more than when a company bans pornopgraphy from the work-place. People have a right to make and see erotica, but they don't have a right to do it on someone elses property (or government property), and they don't have a right to do it someone else's dime (not even the taxpayers dime).
Libraries and schools shouldn't be supported by the government, anyway.
I agree with that.
I think there is still some confusion here that needs to be cleared up. There are four legal status that a prisoner might fall into.
(1) Enemy combatant.
(2) Enemy combatant and war criminal.
(3) Unlawful combatant.
(4) Civillian.
When a prisoner is taken they are regarded as (1), an enemy combatant, by default. That is the status that the military merely has to provide an affidavit to support. As long as he retains that status the prisoner get the rights of a POW, and can be held until the end of the war. To convict the prisoner of either being (2), a war criminal, or (3), and unlawful combatant, the military has to prove his guilt at a military tribunal (i.e. a trial). A military tribunal can also determine that a prisoner is a civillian and release him before the end of the war (or turn him over to the civillian authorities if he is suspected of being civillian criminal).
So, no one acquires the status of (3), an unlawful combatant, or (2), a war criminal, just at the say-so of the military. That is something that has to be established at trial.
Prisoners do acquire the status of (1), an enemy combatant, at the say-so of the military but, if military personel are found to have lied on the affidavit establishing that status they can be punished, and the status of "enemy combatant" is not like the status of "criminal" under civillian law. It actually carries many priviliges and immunities that are not available to civillian prisoners. So it is not such a bad position to wind up in.
If the military is told that they must prove, promptly and beyond a reasonable doubt, that every captured prisoner is at least an enemy combatant, then the result will be that the military will stop taking prisoners. Anyone who looks like they might be an enemy combatant will be shot on the battlefield. That is why the laws of war work the way they do. Yes, it is realatively easy for civillians to get swept up as a POWs, but being a POW is not that bad, and it sure beats being gunned down on the spot.
The recent "WMDs" could very well have been brought in from elsewhere.
Maybe. But they look like Iraqi designs, and it is unlikely that the insurgents would bring in WMDs from another country only to waste them by using them improperly. The sarin gas artillery shell that was found recently was used as a roadside bomb - a use for which it was entirely unsuited. Weapons like that have very little explosive power, and produce very little nerve gas if they are simply detonated. Which suggests that the insurgents retrieved the weapon from a stockpile hidden locally, and that they didn't know that they had a WMD.
And what about netnanny and other censorship software in public schools and libraries?
Both strike me as dumb ideas, but neither strike me as censorship. The government has always had the right to limit what children can read or see on school time, and it has always had the right to attach strings to government money.
You keep on ignoring the fact that the military can (and obviously does) make mistakes.
That is always true of any individual, institution, or authority - so it isn't much of an objection.
Apparently, these "unlawful combatants" can remain at Guantanamo for an indefinite period of time.
If it is determined by a tribunal (i.e. by a military court) that a particular prisoner is an "unlawful combatant" then that prisoner will probably be executed. They certainly won't be held indefinitely. Same goes for those found guilty of war crimes (although a prison term is an option). Prisoners who are merely considered "enemy combatants" can be held until the end of the war. That is the way it has always worked with POWs.
What if some are innocent?
Innocent? Do you mean "what if they were not combatants?" Then it is fortunate that they were taken prisoner instead of being shot on the battlefield - which is what will happen if the military is forced to release every prisoner taken.
Since they don't get a trial, how the hell is anyone going to find out if the military was lying or not?
What difference would a trial for the prisoner make? Any prosecution for falsifying an affidavit would be a seperate legal proceeding.
Also, all the military has to do, if I'm not mistaken, is SUSPECT them of being "unlawful combatants".
You are mistaken. Whether or not they are "unlawful combatants" is something that will have to be determined by a military tribunal. For prisoners taken in a war zone, outside of the US, the government must provide a sworn affidavit confirming the claim that they are "enemy combatants". That just means that they get treated like POWs and go through the military legal system, rather than the civillian legal system.
And, BTW, it would be a violation of the laws of war to turn POWs over to the civillian legal system.
No you are missing the point. The rights of a POW are *not* human rights. They are legal benefits granted in return for compliance with the laws of war. Since when was it a human right to be free from prosecution for killing innocent people? Yet that is one of the rights granted to POWs.
Just because there are no legal rights guarenteed to "illegal combatants" (ones held by illegal captors?) that does not mean they shouldn't be entitled the same fair treatment that a POW or a criminal captured in the US would be given.
Actually it does mean that. POW status includes a number of benefits and immunities that are granteed in return for obeying the laws of war. To grant those benefits and immunities to people who deliberately break the laws of war would be to reward people for such violations. That would itself be a reprehensible act.
The US took down a fair amount of websites that were a "threat" to national security.
Really? Which ones? The government took some of its own records off line. But that is its perogative.
You will get arrested if you say the wrong (albiet stupid) things in the west (such as shouting "BOMB" at a station).
And how exectly is that censorship, let alone "not much better than" executing people for saying the wrong thing?
There seems to have been no solid evidence...
What do you mean "seems to be"? You mean in hindsight? Or the way it looked at the time? They had satelite pictures showing activity at known WMD sites, signal intercepts of communications about WMDs, and eye-witness accounts of WMDs. The eye-wittnesses still say that they saw WMDs.
The only thing lacking, until recently, was some actual WMDs, and of course there was no way to get those without a search.
As I said the US is entitled to hold them prisoner whether they are unlawful combatants or POWs. The US government is currently organising legal proceedings that will determine which prisoners are unlawful combatants or war criminals. In the meantime they are being treated as POWs.
You say most of the prisoners ("Unlawful Combatants") were captured on the battlefield firing at US soldiers, etc etc. How can you know this if there is no trial?
Because the US military says that is how and where they were taken prisoner, and in each case someone in the military has sworn an affidavit to that effect. If it turns out later that they were lying then they can go to prison for it. To my mind that makes the word of the US military a whole lot more reliable than its critics - who have a constitutional right to tell whatever lies their fevered imaginations can make up.
The US (the people and the government) is pretty sensitive to critism.
I'm not American, but I have been living in the US for some years now. I don't particularly like living here, and I intend to leave when I am finished with my studies. That said I have noticed two things since moving here...
(1) Americans, and especially the American press, are pathologically self-critical. Every problem in the entire world is viewed as somehow the result of either US action or inaction. I think this is partly a result of the American tendancy to view the US as the center of the world.
(2) When non-Americans, or at least people who have never lived here, criticise the US they usually display a stunning degree of ignorance about what the US is like, what it has done, and why. Of course Americans who have never lived abroard also display a stunning degree of ignorance about the rest of the world. But there is a difference. Most Americans are aware of their own ignorance about the rest of the world, where as the rest of the world seems to think that it knows America. I think that this is probably because of the dominance of American media. People see a lot of the fictional America that exists in TV shows and movies, and they confuse that with the non-fictional America.
Anyway, speculation aside, I don't think Americans are overly sensitive to criticism. But a lot of them are sick of the BS, totally-divorced-from-reality, criticism that they hear from people outside of the US.
Karma to burn, but I need to vent.
/.?
Ha ha. Since when did spreading anti-US lies cost anyone karma on
Although this is not banning or censoring, strictly speaking, the Bush administration and the corporate media is not much better than its Chinese equivalents.
Not much better? The Chinese government regularly imprisons people for decades at a time for publishing anything that it does not like, or even for such mundane activities as collecting newspaper clippings. Sometimes it even executes people for saying the wrong thing. So what exaclty has the Bush administration or the "corporate media" done which is "not much better" than killing people for speaking freely?
They distorted the facts about the real reason for the Iraqi war -- the claim that there were WMD were at best speculative, and at worst plain lies.
Every western intelligence agency believed that Iraq had WMDs - including the French and German intelligence agencies. The Clinton administration believed that Iraq had WMDs and took military action against Iraq on that basis. Polticians from both the Republican and Democratic parties who saw the intelligence available believed that Iraq had WMDs. In fact some prominent Democrats, like Senator Bob Kerrey, argued for invading Iraq, for that reason, even before 9/11. The Kay report, stated that Saddam Hussein himself appeared to think that he had WMDs, and that the officier core of the Republican Guard also believed that some of their units were equiped with WMDs. Recently a nerve gas weapon was even found in Iraq. If the evidence was "speculative" then one hell of a lot of people were persuaded by it. If the Bush administration was lying then it was telling the same lies as a whole lot of other people.
Everyone was surprised when the WMDs turned out to be either harder to find, or scarcer than expected. But trying to claim, after the fact, that the evidence was "speculative" or that the Bush administration was lying, is itself a blatant and dispicable lie.
The US surely can't point fingers at China for not upholding the basic human rights. The imprisonment of many people in Guantanamo Bay with no trial, no evidence,...
There are two views of the status of the prisoners at Guantanamo. Either they are POWs or they are unlawful combatants. If they are POWs then it would be illegal to try them for anything other than war crimes, and they may be held until the end of the war (and needless to say the war ain't over). If they are illegal combatants then they have no rights under international law.
So explain again what basic human rights are being violated here?
and for basically no real reason other than show the right-wing voters (who sadly seems to be the majority of US voters) that "we're doing something about terrorism".
Most of the prisoners at Guantanamo were captured on the battlefield, with weapons, while they were trying to kill Americans. Is that your idea of "basically no reason"?
Notice any patterns?
Not really. Two are conservative. One is run by Democrats, and one is is libertarian. And the source doesn't say what other think tanks they fund.
Take a look here.
So that is a minimum of $750 for every instance of infringment, even if it was not willful (i.e. even if you did not realise that you were infringing). That should give you some idea of why the people getting sued by the RIAA are all caving so easily. Even at $750 per mp3 (if they are lucky) the statutory damages can add up real fast.
There are plenty of civil remidies for copyright holders already.
Hmm... Well there are a lot of people who think that copyright is doomed because in this digital age there is no way to stop copyright infringement. But isn't that just another way of saying that there are no effective remedies for copyright holders?
I think it would be more plausible to argue that this new measure will be just as futile as existing measures, rather than trying to argue that existing measures are already effective.
There's a lot of redundant, unenforcable bloatlaw in there.
There is no bloatlaw from the government's point of view. Everybody is guilty of something. If they want to get you, it's just a matter of figuring out what that something is.
They can still claim damages for past use of the trademark. In fact they can claim damages, any profits made under the Lindows name, and legal costs. Given the potentially immense value of the Windows trademark, damages due to dilution, confusion in the market, or tarnishment (etc), could amount to a very big pile of money.
In the USA anyway, you are presumed innocent until proven guilty.
That is only true in criminal trials, and not always true even then. Copyright is civil matter, so the standard is usually "on the balance of the evidence". If one side can produce a pile of documents relating to the development of some code, and the other side can only produce a guy who says "I wrote it" then it is a pretty safe bet that the side with all the ducuments will win.
Sound stupid? Welcome to the wacky world of intellectual property.
Kerry neither beat the drums of war like Alcibiades nor ran the invasion like Nicias.
I didn't compare him with Alcibiades, and the fact that he is not running thngs yet is beside the point.
Nicias was no pansy. He had fought bravely as a yonger man, and had even proven to be a competent military leader. He was also widely admired for his other qualities. The problem was that he was opposed to the war and the expedition, yet he was unwilling to withdraw and bring the Athenians home. As a result he was unwilling to fight his way through, or take the heat for backing out.
Kerry appears to be in exactly the same position. He does not believe in the aims of the war, but neither is he willing to say that he will withdraw.
If the war is going to be fought effectively then the US needs a leader who wants to fight the war, and who believes in the aims of the war. If the US is going to pull out then it needs a leader who is willing to bring the troops home immediately before more lives wasted. What the US does not need is a leader like Kerry who neither believes in the cause, nor is willing to abandon it.
In the period you are talking about Iceland didn't exactly have a government. It did have laws, and there were democratic elements to the way things worked, but because there was no government it is usually called an anarchy. Anyway, it was not a modern democracy. They did not have universal sufferage or representative government, or any of the other features of modern democracy.
There were other democracies around before the US, and after the classical period though. Switzerland, and Republican Venice for example. But neither were modern democracies.
Military participation was generally limited to the wealthier citizens...
...and war aims were generally limited, stopping far short of conquest or delenda-est-Carthago extremes.
Not so in the case of Athens. From the battle of Salamis onwards Athens depended on her Navy, and on the rowers who powered its ships. In fact that is one of the reasons why Athens adopted a democratic system that included all male citizens - even the poor.
That was true prior to Alexander the Great. Not true after.
The ancient Greeks were the first technophiles (want to guess what language that word is derived from?). They also invented the study of logic. I think that has something to do with programing doesn't it?
As a Kiwi I am all in favour of giving the title to New Zealand.