wtf has this got to do with "letting the market decide"? your talking about kids braclets, they are hardly in a position to decide anything. I would suggest once the market knows these bracklets are made with a dangerous heavy metal, it will decide. fail.
Sir —
The market's invisible hand rewards those selling cadmium bracelets because they are cheaper than other kinds; people buy them in the belief that they are essentially equivalent in every way but price (and, interestingly, looks). However, as per the article, these bracelets are not equivalent in their health effects - the cadmium bracelets present an enormous health hazard. I agree that if people knew the presence of cadmium and its effects, they would not buy cadmium laden bracelets. However people do not know, they have any way of knowing such a thing, and as most people would presume that such a toxin would never be in children's bracelets there is unlikely to be inquiry by most purchasers (many are also likely aware that the salesperson knows as much about the heavy metal content of the bracelet as they would know about... virtually anything, hence there is no source of information that can be accessed with reasonable levels of effort).
With enough money one can ensure the market never "knows". A well funded company that has purchased all its competitors and has inroads into multiple marketing vectors can present whatever image they feel appropriate. Your rebuttal would seem to be premised on a society made up predominantly of informed, conscientious consumers. That is not the society we now live in. Consumers today are at best uninformed, indifferent, and short-sighted. On average they are self-indulgent, misinformed, and impulsive.
For example, look at the food production and distribution system in the United States. People who eat meat at fast food joints are consuming (albeit in small portions) sterilized faeces and ground up other humans. Heck, Monsanto's still around, and doing rather well, in spite of well known criticism.
Alas, I would disagree with the assertion that the market can self-correct in all cases (the formula is rather simple - if the profit minus the cost of mitigation is greater than the cost of continuing to sell a bad product - continue to sell). Perhaps if the culture changes and people become conscious of their consumables we will see a change in the type of market. But for now, if the market were left to decide, and the avenues of information were paid to ameliorate criticism, there could continue to be a healthy market for cadmium laden bracelets that are cheaper than alternatives and purchased in the absence of education, awareness and forethought.
As a matter of interest, the phrase "international law" covers the law governing the resolution of disputes on international trade, as well as disputes between states that are governed by treaties (among other sources of international law). The prior is known as private international law (see, e.g. UNIDROIT for the most recent attempts to codify the norm), the latter public international law. Private international law generally refers to the mechanism for choosing a procedural and substantive law to resolve a dispute between private parties (i.e. German law, U.S. law, Mercantile law, etc. governing a dispute over lost cargo between e.g. Apple in the U.S. and Acer in Taiwan), often referred to with the phrase conflict of laws.
The phrase "international law", though, is often interchangeably used to refer to both - although in a context-sensitive way. One would hardly ever use the phrase "international law" to refer to a situation where the dispute fell into both categories, although with the advent of such vehicles for private disputes against states such as ICSID and other mechanisms this is changing.
The phrase "international law" covers a great deal of to what happens in the Hague - at the Peace Palace, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, etc. Such happenings include both private and public international law. The international law that gives rise to these happenings generally require an accord between states, and in some states the ratification of that accord into law, which may (or may not) require the cessation of sovereignty (as the grandparent post suggests, though bald it was), subject to the actual enforceability of the treaty's terms as against a state in breach. However, the treaty may impose obligations (directly or by way of legislation ratifying the treaty) on private parties as to whom and how the dispute is resolved, which obligations are both domestic and extraterritorial and may often be enforced in any number of venues (Courts, arbitrations, etc) around the world (in other words a human or corporation in a state may have obligations enforced against it because the state has signed into law an agreement to a treaty).
Regardless of whether international treaties may constitute a cessation of state sovereignty, in my opinion the cessation of sovereignty is neither novel nor wrong. Quite the opposite, it is the defining building block of civilized global society from our current fractured set of post-Peace of Westphalia styled sovereign states. At present individual sovereign states are ostensibly adverse in interest on many issues, but nevertheless need to rely on each other and have to live together in harmony indefinitely. Without accords (treaties or otherwise) this co-existence would be counterproductive and ultimately untenable. Treaties such as ACTA may be heinous (in my humble opinion), but that example ought not to deprive humanity of forward thinking accords that are of mutual benefit.
You are quite right that ACTA is being brought in an unconventional and clandestine way. The media companies are using the EU as a political proxy to push for obligations on Canadian citizens, and the vehicle for those obligations is -at the moment- a proposed international treaty. I'm not as apprised on this as I would like to be, so I would parrot Michael Geist's comments on it.
The purposes of patents was, among other things, to publicize inventions that would otherwise have remained trade secrets, allow commercialization with the risk of others "stealing" the idea, and to prevent the invention from disappearing when the inventor died (these purposes being long before corporations lived in perpetuity).
In many ways the patent system has succeeded in achieving many of its objects in a way that I feel confident has significantly advanced human society (in ways that would never have been achieved without). Contrast China, which until as recent as just over a hundred years ago was known - to intellectual property historians - for inventing and re-inventing the same ideas. However, the patents system is not without its costs, which costs include reduced competition, barriers to entry, etc. A so-called tax on the system, as you say. The benefits of the patent system ought to be measured against its costs - there certainly seems to be adequate impetus to do so at this time.
On the point of division of harm, I do not believe advanced countries have a greater burden than less advanced nations. In fact, I am quite confident of the opposite. Most countries are bound to TRIPS, an onerous IP treaty that throws up barriers to development (the tax, as you say), where that development infringes upon the intellectual property of so-called "developed" states (the domain of most intellectual property). It should go without saying that the developing- and underdeveloped-world has suffered, at least in the short term since the Uganda round, significant harm from these barriers, to the modest benefit of the developed nations. It's worthwhile to note that TRIPS has been widely regarded as a bit of a coup by the U.S. over the developing- and underdeveloped-world signatories.
A finding of liability in the United States is not necessary (and often not even warranted or appropriate) to enforce judgments made by foreign Courts.
As a general rule, because the USA and Canada have such similar legal systems, and especially because of provisions in the WIPO Copyright Treaty (specifically Article 14), a judgment awarded by a Canadian Judge against a company who has assets in the United states is very likely enforceable in the United States by way of the law of comity.
In other words, a plaintiff with a judgment from a Canadian Judge that finds copyright infringement by a defendant can take that judgment (literally the paper with the Canadian Judge's signature) to a Court in the United States and ask a U.S. Judge to enforce the award against the company's U.S. assets. The U.S. Judge need not reconsider the merits of the case (though there is usually some discretion if the award conflicts with what a domestic could would have found), and in many cases wouldn't have the authority to not enforce the award.
Thus whether the judgment is a binding precedent (i.e. stare decisis) in the U.S. is not relevant to its enforceability. If the defendants would be liable for these acts in the United States is probably not relevant to enforceability of an award - if they are liable in Canada for copyright infringement, they cannot shelter their assets in the U.S. (Nor could they shelter their assets in Canada from a U.S. judgment).
Incidentally, a binding precedent (which would typically be made by an appeal court, not the judgment of a trial court) requires all "lower" courts (or, with strict stare decisis courts the same level as the deciding court) hearing subsequent cases with the same factual and legal analysis to come to the same finding as the precedent.
It may be the cost of electricity that has given rise to those damages.
Supposing $0.053 KW/h cost of electricity. (Just happens to be the first cost of electricity that came up in my Google search.)
At 200W (electricity usage for a running computer) - 50W (electricity usage for an idle computer) = 150W (taken to be our excess electricity used by running Seti@Home instead of having the computer idle)
Over 5,000 computers
($0.053 KW/h / 1000) * 150W * 5000 = $39.75/hour hourly difference in electricity between idle and Seti@Home
At 18 hours a day that would otherwise be idle, for 365 days a year:
The above is by no means meant to be an estimate of the electrical costs actually incurred because of Seti@Home in this case, but I think it is illustrative of how the cost of electricity could be relatively large over a long enough period of time in circumstances similar to those described in the story.
its nothing more than damage to route around, like the internet was designed to do
The media barons out there are saying "Internet piracy is nothing more than damage to route around or snuff out, like the global media conglomerates were designed to do."
The problem with class actions is that they are opt-in for restitution, but opt-out for forfeiture of private cause.
I'm not sure what you mean by opt-in for restitution but opt-out for forfeiture of private cause.
Class actions are species of statues - i.e. they arise from legislation - and those statutes state whether the class actions are "opt-in" (i.e. you must consent to being represented) or opt-out (i.e. you must notify the Court of your desire to not be bound by the determination of the class proceeding). There may be some hybrids where it is opt-in for certain subject-matter but opt-out for others, which hybrids seem to be what you are alluding to. Hybrids are not the norm, and indeed I've never encountered such hybrid species of class proceeding, though.
If a class action comes along and you don't get wind of it until it's settled, then you're out BOTH your share of the settlement AND the opportunity to pursue a private claim.
The notice requirements of class actions are supposed to make certain that you are informed that your rights are being affected. Many notice programs involve direct mailings, posts in newspapers, email lists, websites, phone calls, etc., but inevitably people will fall through the cracks. There is also certainly the possibility that one who has not been notified of the proceeding could have their rights affected by the class action. However there is often (but not always) some remedial power of a class action judge to handle individual issues and specific circumstances that would justify an individual (or subclass of individuals) being dealt with separate from the class proper. There is also an inherent equitable jurisdiction of the court to overturn or modify any unduly harsh determination that deprives an individual of their rights. That being said, such remedies would probably be prohibitively expensive for any individuals to pursue (though in many circumstances challenging a decision would be less expensive than the cost of an individual action).
Class actions typically serve three purposes, none of which is making lawyers rich (though that may sometimes happens, sometimes it bankrupts law firms, too). These purposes are:
1. Modify corporate / government behaviour
2. Increase the efficiency of the resolution of a dispute
3. Increase the access to justice of those who would not be able to afford any
It is not insightful to say that class-action lawsuits serve one purpose: to make a "lawfirm (sic) a boatload of cash". It is uninformed, misleading, pejorative, and unsubstantiated - which in my opinion is the opposite of insightful.
There are innumerable examples of class actions fulfilling their purposes, from recognizing the rights of veterans to appropriate levels of compensation, to deterring irresponsible behaviour likely to cause man-made environmental disasters, through compensating multitudes of individuals for small wrongs that would be otherwise incomprehensibly uneconomical to litigate.
Further, a class action is simply a vehicle for resolving the rights of many individuals who would otherwise be forced to engage in individual litigation. It does not change substantive rights to any sort of compensation, though it may change (and generally eliminate, for beneficiaries in a plaintiffs' class) the cost of resolving a legitimate dispute that would otherwise simply never be addressed.
In my humble opinion, the money wasted on video cameras would be better spent on health & education for the poor, incentivizing smart people to become police officers by paying them more, and vocational rehabilitation of offenders.
I assume you have experience with the prison system to make such a studious observation condemning it as "barbaric". I've worked in the prison system, and I can assure you that it is no more barbaric than the education system that American liberals have hand crafted since the early 20th century. I would like to see what else you classify as barbaric.
You may be interested to know that the public education system in the United States is modeled after the prison system, as suggested by Henry Ford (a "conservative", whatever that means).
I note that you've included examples that the US prison system is not barbaric because it doesn't violate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the Geneva conventions on torture. For example:
- Prisoners are well fed
Starving people is a recognized form of torture.
- Prisoners have access to free health care
They likely couldn't afford any - being deprived of the ability to work and all.
- Prisoners are not forced to do labor of any kind, often opting to do work, which they are compensated for.
Forcing people to work is called slavery.
That the US prison system doesn't violate universally recognized laws of conscience (viz. jus cogens) is hardly compelling evidence that it's not barbaric. The basis for an argument that it's barbaric is that it effectively causes immense harm but provides no benefit to the prisoners, and limited benefit (if any) to society. This is particularly so if, as in the context of my post above, one is talking about crimes committed in the absence of free will.
On an aside note, I think the greatest travesty is additional punitive punishments which occur after imprisonment. The additional punitive punishments afterwards, such as removal of voting rights, the right to bear arms, and conviction status which is career destroying which is greatly more punishing for a one time offender (regardless of the intent) as compared to a career criminal.
I completely agree. If prison terms provided catharsis - i.e. you did something wrong, you do the time, I think it'd have some deterrence, but without the ostracizing and stigmatizing that prevents convicts from reaching the first rung of civil society (and out of abject poverty). The badge of convict serves as a lifelong reminder that one is a lesser being than non-convicts, rather than prison serving as repentance after which one can move forward with life. However, as it stands, the lifelong branding only serves to increase the likelihood one remains in abject poverty and reoffends or 'graduates' to a more heinous crime.
You make some interesting points and I don't disagree with some of your conclusions, however it is important to keep in mind that "barbaric" is a pejorative referring to a lack of "civilized" influences. The very notion of civilization is that individuals must sacrifice certain behaviors in order to benefit from the synergies of group participation. People who cannot, for whatever reason, conform to a certain minimal extent must be ostracized, for the good of the group.
I don't necessarily disagree, but you might find it interesting to read about the Native American / First Nations systems of justice prior to European colonization. In particular, natives who committed "crimes" would be made to sit with victims in a tent with elders until the elders decided that there was appropriate empathy and repentance by the accused. In contrast, nowadays, the Elders often describe the youth who come out of modern prisons as "forever lost". While there have probably always been people who would be considered "forever lost" (i.e. those who cannot be redeemed), I think the prison system creates such people.
This is just food for thought - there are interesting alternate paradigms to the industrialized mandatory monastery.
Yes. I hold both these beliefs. The justice system is not about blame, it's about keeping criminals safe from society and (in my mind) rehabilitating them.
The U.S. justice system is founded on the monastery model of repentance. See: Michael Foucault, "Discipline & Punish". The modern-day U.S. prison system is an industrial model that seeks taxpayer rent in exchange for effectively perpetual incarceration for anything that may be classified in the public's eyes as a crime. (See: Ann Krueger's paper on "rent seeking").
You would be very hard pressed to find anyone conscious of what the system is who would describe the prison system as something that in any way rehabilitates. In the criminal justice industry (lawyers, police, judges, etc.) often it's called "criminal college": where one learns the trade and networks. The prison system stigmatizes and ostracizes - it makes travel, finding a job, getting education all more difficult; it has no benefit for prisoners (in my opinion, and according to the three federal court judges I've asked this very question of). It also has questionable benefit or society - but that's a bigger question.
You would never blame a computer for a programmer's error, but you would try to fix the bugs, and if there was a dangerous bug you couldn't fix you wouldn't use that computer.
I agree. The prison system necessarily presumes culpability - i.e. that the criminal act was conducted of one's own free will. If it were otherwise the prison system would simply be segregation of those whose relationship with society is unacceptable because of factors they are unable to change - their genetics and/or environment, and our prison system would be analogous to apartheid.
Presumably, there is a selective advantage to improved learning and memory. Presumably, there is some kind of downside that balances that selective advantage. Are there other behaviors for which the rat is impaired
As you suggest, there are two possibilities why this advantage hasn't occurred naturally:
1. It adds no selective advantage;
2. The advantage is outweighed by the costs.
There is a third possibility, namely that the set of mutations necessary to give rise to this advantage are too improbable to occur (or perhaps even fundamentally impossible).
Based on no knowledge whatsoever, I suspect that there probably is some selective advantage to higher intelligence in rats, over long enough periods of time. I hypothesize that the rats lack the ability to effectively dissipate heat from a highly active brain, and concurrently those evolutions that allow more effective dissipation of heat (e.g. baldness) are contrary to (or have never occurred concurrent with) the selective advantage of the intelligence. Perhaps we will breed intelligent, bald rats.
If any employee caused this kind of damage the customers/consumers would sue and employees would be terminated. Yet in this case, we have companies (and hence employees) that are "too big|valuable|important too fail" so they get bailed out.
It has been observed that companies that are "too big to fail" will, instead of attempting to remedy or avoid their calamity, ensure their own disaster on the basis that the have a guaranteed bail-out. This perverse incentive is one form of the moral hazard.
In essence, being too big to fail has become a form of (unpaid for/externalized) insurance against failure because you can rely on the taxpayer to bail you out. The likelihood (and amount) of a bailout increases with the magnitude of your failure.
Incidental to your post, one theme of Jeffrey Sach's book "The End of Poverty" is that the lack of infrastructure in the developing and especially the subsistent populations of the world is in no small part a result of the lack of population density (i.e. rurality). I think your post accords with this conclusion.
Also, how do you produce "hard evidence that there were no competition problems"? Tell them you looked really hard but couldn't find any counterevidence?
Sir- Cite existing studies, or alternatively commission a study by a market research / auditor like PWC or Deloitte of:
1. the market effects of the merger upon the same types of products and services that are offered by both companies, which study ought to (if the merger is to be approved) indicate that there is a limited impact upon the competition in all of the significant types of products and services where both these companies presently provide products and services in the marketplace; and
2. the ability for the merged company to exclude the products and services of other companies now that the two have merged, and the likelihood and market effects of that possibility of exclusion; which study ought to (again, if the merger is to be approved) indicate that there is a limited likelihood or impact upon competition because the company can now exclude other companies from its decisions.
The prior is to recognize and prevent the creation of horizontals (i.e. the single provider of a product or service, e.g. Microsoft-OS's) and verticals (i.e. the single provider of an entire product from start to finish, e.g. Monsanto-food).
The EU commission wants to know, I suspect, whether this merger will make Oracle the only provider of certain products and services (e.g. databases), or alternatively whether it will make Oracle a single solution provider at the expense of others (i.e. bundling the Oracle database with Solaris operating systems with Sparc servers so as to exclude PostgreSQL, Linux and Intel). In the prior case there are obviously other databases, PostgreSQL, etc., and in the latter there are clear reasons why the merger wouldn't hurt the OS or server market (namely there is vibrant competition in both with Solaris). That's just my opinion, though - I don't know the details.
I agree wholeheartedly and have an anecdote to boot.
I have an Xbox 360. I copied Mass Effect onto the Xbox 360 so that it would load and run faster. I then proceeded to 'rent' a movie (Troy) in HD. It took around 30 minutes to be able to get Xbox to accept one of my credit cards (incidentally no feedback was ever given as to why it was rejecting them). Finally, the Xbox accepted a credit card I rented the movie and it refused to download because I lacked space. So I started deleting all the "little" games and so on from the Xbox (i.e. everything but Mass Effect, because I didn't want to have to wait to load the whole game back on there). Deleting all the little games took around 30 minutes because you have to individually delete every game through the user interface, and there apparently was a plethora pre-installed (how hard is a "delete every game I've never used" button?). I finally conceded that I would have to delete Mass Effect in order to be able to fit Troy onto the 20GB hard drive (this became apparent only after I had paid for the movie).
As a result of my experience, I bought a PS3 and get all my content through that. The Xbox collects dust. I'll never download another movie through Xbox again, and it's actually fairly unlikely it'll ever be turned on again. Had the Xbox come with a bigger hard drive (who even makes 20GB hard drives? honestly.), or it been cheap to get an external drive, I may have just kept using it instead of getting the PS3.
The fact is that the US has half of the world's colleges and universities
Sir- I essentially agree with all your other statements, but am not certain the above is supported, based on a quick search on Google.
The U.S. has roughly 3300 universities (with around 17.5 million enrolment), out of around 13,000 worldwide (of which over 17 million are enrolled in roughly the top 30 of the world's largest universities). The U.S. therefore has 25% of the world's universities by number, which is seems a lot numerically but hardly half, and in any event the U.S. has a tiny fraction of the total number enrolled given that the largest 0.2% of the world's universities enrol the same number as the entire United States does in post-secondary school.
This comment on numbers is just a statistical observation I noted when I just did a google search, and it says nothing of the quality of the education available outside the United States (or variability of it therein).
Excuse me IANAL, but isn't the truth never libelous? Even opinion is supposed to receive the utmost protection. Libel is reserved for those know knowingly lie simply to inflict harm. I mean sure the RIAA doesn't agree with Ray's angle, but since when is well stated opinion backed by dozens of sources, and agreed upon by pretty much everybody who isn't a RIAA fascist suddenly become illegal to share? Thank god the judge dismissed it, but the fact that he didn't slap them in hard for trying to silence a critic makes me understand why in the eyes of the law, we the people are fucked.
I recall there being a number of philosophical thoughts on the relationship between libel and truth. The first I recall is that in general libel is any written statement that causes harm. You can claim for damages from libel anyone who makes a statement that causes harm. However, if the written statement was true, that is a complete defence to claims for libel.
The second school of thought I recall is that libel is any untrue statement that causes harm. Therefore you can only claim for damages where the written statements cause harm and the statements were untrue.
In the first scenario one can sue for any harm by way of written statements, and the defendant may allege as a defence (and must prove) that they were true statements. In the second scenario one can only sue for untrue statements and must show that the harmful statements were untrue. In other words, the onus of bearing the burden of proof shifts and the type of allegations change.
In both these cases, true statements prevent you from being responsible in law for damages resulting from the written statements - but through different legal mechanisms. There are other schools of thought, however, and your mileage may vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction - there are places where the truth is not a defence, particularly if that truth was gotten through deceit or in violation of privacy laws. There are more differences between the two schools of thought above, and the differences are subtle, but they can have significant effects procedurally and practically.
The history of Sony's management is quite fascinating. I've lost the link, but I recall there being an article about Sony's decision over who to replace their then-CEO around 1999 (Norio Ohga), who had been CEO for ages and brought Sony to new economic heights. The choice of his successor was either the head of Sony Entertainment (i.e. the copyright/media side of Sony) or the head of Sony Computer (i.e. the head of the electronics side). They ended up choosing the head of the copyright/media side of Sony, Nobuyuki Idei.
Anecdotally, since that decision, I've noticed that Sony's technology shine has dropped completely off my radar (i.e. I don't even turn to them to find out what the latest and greatest tech is, whereas at one point they were certainly a contender for something that I'd consider cool), while their foray into rent-seeking for their copyright has also gone off the deep end.
I might be wrong about the details of the history - I'd be interested in finding the article again, or having the background.
If it's true, I believe the change in the "personality" or "culture" of Sony reflects the decision that they made to make the head of their copyright/media division the head of the company. I believe their shareholders have been paying for that decision ever since.
Slashdot Mirror
wtf has this got to do with "letting the market decide"? your talking about kids braclets, they are hardly in a position to decide anything. I would suggest once the market knows these bracklets are made with a dangerous heavy metal, it will decide. fail.
Sir —
The market's invisible hand rewards those selling cadmium bracelets because they are cheaper than other kinds; people buy them in the belief that they are essentially equivalent in every way but price (and, interestingly, looks). However, as per the article, these bracelets are not equivalent in their health effects - the cadmium bracelets present an enormous health hazard. I agree that if people knew the presence of cadmium and its effects, they would not buy cadmium laden bracelets. However people do not know, they have any way of knowing such a thing, and as most people would presume that such a toxin would never be in children's bracelets there is unlikely to be inquiry by most purchasers (many are also likely aware that the salesperson knows as much about the heavy metal content of the bracelet as they would know about ... virtually anything, hence there is no source of information that can be accessed with reasonable levels of effort).
With enough money one can ensure the market never "knows". A well funded company that has purchased all its competitors and has inroads into multiple marketing vectors can present whatever image they feel appropriate. Your rebuttal would seem to be premised on a society made up predominantly of informed, conscientious consumers. That is not the society we now live in. Consumers today are at best uninformed, indifferent, and short-sighted. On average they are self-indulgent, misinformed, and impulsive.
For example, look at the food production and distribution system in the United States. People who eat meat at fast food joints are consuming (albeit in small portions) sterilized faeces and ground up other humans. Heck, Monsanto's still around, and doing rather well, in spite of well known criticism.
Alas, I would disagree with the assertion that the market can self-correct in all cases (the formula is rather simple - if the profit minus the cost of mitigation is greater than the cost of continuing to sell a bad product - continue to sell). Perhaps if the culture changes and people become conscious of their consumables we will see a change in the type of market. But for now, if the market were left to decide, and the avenues of information were paid to ameliorate criticism, there could continue to be a healthy market for cadmium laden bracelets that are cheaper than alternatives and purchased in the absence of education, awareness and forethought.
Sir —
As a matter of interest, the phrase "international law" covers the law governing the resolution of disputes on international trade, as well as disputes between states that are governed by treaties (among other sources of international law). The prior is known as private international law (see, e.g. UNIDROIT for the most recent attempts to codify the norm), the latter public international law. Private international law generally refers to the mechanism for choosing a procedural and substantive law to resolve a dispute between private parties (i.e. German law, U.S. law, Mercantile law, etc. governing a dispute over lost cargo between e.g. Apple in the U.S. and Acer in Taiwan), often referred to with the phrase conflict of laws.
The phrase "international law", though, is often interchangeably used to refer to both - although in a context-sensitive way. One would hardly ever use the phrase "international law" to refer to a situation where the dispute fell into both categories, although with the advent of such vehicles for private disputes against states such as ICSID and other mechanisms this is changing.
The phrase "international law" covers a great deal of to what happens in the Hague - at the Peace Palace, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, etc. Such happenings include both private and public international law. The international law that gives rise to these happenings generally require an accord between states, and in some states the ratification of that accord into law, which may (or may not) require the cessation of sovereignty (as the grandparent post suggests, though bald it was), subject to the actual enforceability of the treaty's terms as against a state in breach. However, the treaty may impose obligations (directly or by way of legislation ratifying the treaty) on private parties as to whom and how the dispute is resolved, which obligations are both domestic and extraterritorial and may often be enforced in any number of venues (Courts, arbitrations, etc) around the world (in other words a human or corporation in a state may have obligations enforced against it because the state has signed into law an agreement to a treaty).
Regardless of whether international treaties may constitute a cessation of state sovereignty, in my opinion the cessation of sovereignty is neither novel nor wrong. Quite the opposite, it is the defining building block of civilized global society from our current fractured set of post-Peace of Westphalia styled sovereign states. At present individual sovereign states are ostensibly adverse in interest on many issues, but nevertheless need to rely on each other and have to live together in harmony indefinitely. Without accords (treaties or otherwise) this co-existence would be counterproductive and ultimately untenable. Treaties such as ACTA may be heinous (in my humble opinion), but that example ought not to deprive humanity of forward thinking accords that are of mutual benefit.
You are quite right that ACTA is being brought in an unconventional and clandestine way. The media companies are using the EU as a political proxy to push for obligations on Canadian citizens, and the vehicle for those obligations is -at the moment- a proposed international treaty. I'm not as apprised on this as I would like to be, so I would parrot Michael Geist's comments on it.
Sir -
The purposes of patents was, among other things, to publicize inventions that would otherwise have remained trade secrets, allow commercialization with the risk of others "stealing" the idea, and to prevent the invention from disappearing when the inventor died (these purposes being long before corporations lived in perpetuity).
In many ways the patent system has succeeded in achieving many of its objects in a way that I feel confident has significantly advanced human society (in ways that would never have been achieved without). Contrast China, which until as recent as just over a hundred years ago was known - to intellectual property historians - for inventing and re-inventing the same ideas. However, the patents system is not without its costs, which costs include reduced competition, barriers to entry, etc. A so-called tax on the system, as you say. The benefits of the patent system ought to be measured against its costs - there certainly seems to be adequate impetus to do so at this time.
On the point of division of harm, I do not believe advanced countries have a greater burden than less advanced nations. In fact, I am quite confident of the opposite. Most countries are bound to TRIPS, an onerous IP treaty that throws up barriers to development (the tax, as you say), where that development infringes upon the intellectual property of so-called "developed" states (the domain of most intellectual property). It should go without saying that the developing- and underdeveloped-world has suffered, at least in the short term since the Uganda round, significant harm from these barriers, to the modest benefit of the developed nations. It's worthwhile to note that TRIPS has been widely regarded as a bit of a coup by the U.S. over the developing- and underdeveloped-world signatories.
Sir,
A finding of liability in the United States is not necessary (and often not even warranted or appropriate) to enforce judgments made by foreign Courts.
As a general rule, because the USA and Canada have such similar legal systems, and especially because of provisions in the WIPO Copyright Treaty (specifically Article 14), a judgment awarded by a Canadian Judge against a company who has assets in the United states is very likely enforceable in the United States by way of the law of comity.
In other words, a plaintiff with a judgment from a Canadian Judge that finds copyright infringement by a defendant can take that judgment (literally the paper with the Canadian Judge's signature) to a Court in the United States and ask a U.S. Judge to enforce the award against the company's U.S. assets. The U.S. Judge need not reconsider the merits of the case (though there is usually some discretion if the award conflicts with what a domestic could would have found), and in many cases wouldn't have the authority to not enforce the award.
Thus whether the judgment is a binding precedent (i.e. stare decisis) in the U.S. is not relevant to its enforceability. If the defendants would be liable for these acts in the United States is probably not relevant to enforceability of an award - if they are liable in Canada for copyright infringement, they cannot shelter their assets in the U.S. (Nor could they shelter their assets in Canada from a U.S. judgment).
Incidentally, a binding precedent (which would typically be made by an appeal court, not the judgment of a trial court) requires all "lower" courts (or, with strict stare decisis courts the same level as the deciding court) hearing subsequent cases with the same factual and legal analysis to come to the same finding as the precedent.
It may be the cost of electricity that has given rise to those damages.
Supposing $0.053 KW/h cost of electricity. (Just happens to be the first cost of electricity that came up in my Google search.)
At 200W (electricity usage for a running computer) - 50W (electricity usage for an idle computer) = 150W (taken to be our excess electricity used by running Seti@Home instead of having the computer idle)
Over 5,000 computers
($0.053 KW/h / 1000) * 150W * 5000 = $39.75/hour hourly difference in electricity between idle and Seti@Home
At 18 hours a day that would otherwise be idle, for 365 days a year:
$39.75/hour * 18 hours/day * 365 days/year = $261,157.50 per year.
Over four years that's a cost above $1 million.
The above is by no means meant to be an estimate of the electrical costs actually incurred because of Seti@Home in this case, but I think it is illustrative of how the cost of electricity could be relatively large over a long enough period of time in circumstances similar to those described in the story.
its nothing more than damage to route around, like the internet was designed to do
The media barons out there are saying "Internet piracy is nothing more than damage to route around or snuff out, like the global media conglomerates were designed to do."
A byproduct of CANDU reactors is Helium-3.
I'm not the first to note this, evidently.
The problem with class actions is that they are opt-in for restitution, but opt-out for forfeiture of private cause.
I'm not sure what you mean by opt-in for restitution but opt-out for forfeiture of private cause.
Class actions are species of statues - i.e. they arise from legislation - and those statutes state whether the class actions are "opt-in" (i.e. you must consent to being represented) or opt-out (i.e. you must notify the Court of your desire to not be bound by the determination of the class proceeding). There may be some hybrids where it is opt-in for certain subject-matter but opt-out for others, which hybrids seem to be what you are alluding to. Hybrids are not the norm, and indeed I've never encountered such hybrid species of class proceeding, though.
If a class action comes along and you don't get wind of it until it's settled, then you're out BOTH your share of the settlement AND the opportunity to pursue a private claim.
The notice requirements of class actions are supposed to make certain that you are informed that your rights are being affected. Many notice programs involve direct mailings, posts in newspapers, email lists, websites, phone calls, etc., but inevitably people will fall through the cracks. There is also certainly the possibility that one who has not been notified of the proceeding could have their rights affected by the class action. However there is often (but not always) some remedial power of a class action judge to handle individual issues and specific circumstances that would justify an individual (or subclass of individuals) being dealt with separate from the class proper. There is also an inherent equitable jurisdiction of the court to overturn or modify any unduly harsh determination that deprives an individual of their rights. That being said, such remedies would probably be prohibitively expensive for any individuals to pursue (though in many circumstances challenging a decision would be less expensive than the cost of an individual action).
Sir - With respect,
Class actions typically serve three purposes, none of which is making lawyers rich (though that may sometimes happens, sometimes it bankrupts law firms, too). These purposes are:
1. Modify corporate / government behaviour
2. Increase the efficiency of the resolution of a dispute
3. Increase the access to justice of those who would not be able to afford any
It is not insightful to say that class-action lawsuits serve one purpose: to make a "lawfirm (sic) a boatload of cash". It is uninformed, misleading, pejorative, and unsubstantiated - which in my opinion is the opposite of insightful.
There are innumerable examples of class actions fulfilling their purposes, from recognizing the rights of veterans to appropriate levels of compensation, to deterring irresponsible behaviour likely to cause man-made environmental disasters, through compensating multitudes of individuals for small wrongs that would be otherwise incomprehensibly uneconomical to litigate.
Further, a class action is simply a vehicle for resolving the rights of many individuals who would otherwise be forced to engage in individual litigation. It does not change substantive rights to any sort of compensation, though it may change (and generally eliminate, for beneficiaries in a plaintiffs' class) the cost of resolving a legitimate dispute that would otherwise simply never be addressed.
Human beings are not evolved to live below sea level.
Didn't you see Bioshock? Best... documentary ... ever ...
Indeed. Not that it's had any discernible effect on crime rates in London.
In my humble opinion, the money wasted on video cameras would be better spent on health & education for the poor, incentivizing smart people to become police officers by paying them more, and vocational rehabilitation of offenders.
The United States of Canada is an even bigger hat over Jesusland. Looks like a toque, eh?
I assume you have experience with the prison system to make such a studious observation condemning it as "barbaric". I've worked in the prison system, and I can assure you that it is no more barbaric than the education system that American liberals have hand crafted since the early 20th century. I would like to see what else you classify as barbaric.
You may be interested to know that the public education system in the United States is modeled after the prison system, as suggested by Henry Ford (a "conservative", whatever that means).
I note that you've included examples that the US prison system is not barbaric because it doesn't violate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the Geneva conventions on torture. For example:
- Prisoners are well fed
Starving people is a recognized form of torture.
- Prisoners have access to free health care
They likely couldn't afford any - being deprived of the ability to work and all.
- Prisoners are not forced to do labor of any kind, often opting to do work, which they are compensated for.
Forcing people to work is called slavery.
That the US prison system doesn't violate universally recognized laws of conscience (viz. jus cogens) is hardly compelling evidence that it's not barbaric. The basis for an argument that it's barbaric is that it effectively causes immense harm but provides no benefit to the prisoners, and limited benefit (if any) to society. This is particularly so if, as in the context of my post above, one is talking about crimes committed in the absence of free will.
On an aside note, I think the greatest travesty is additional punitive punishments which occur after imprisonment. The additional punitive punishments afterwards, such as removal of voting rights, the right to bear arms, and conviction status which is career destroying which is greatly more punishing for a one time offender (regardless of the intent) as compared to a career criminal.
I completely agree. If prison terms provided catharsis - i.e. you did something wrong, you do the time, I think it'd have some deterrence, but without the ostracizing and stigmatizing that prevents convicts from reaching the first rung of civil society (and out of abject poverty). The badge of convict serves as a lifelong reminder that one is a lesser being than non-convicts, rather than prison serving as repentance after which one can move forward with life. However, as it stands, the lifelong branding only serves to increase the likelihood one remains in abject poverty and reoffends or 'graduates' to a more heinous crime.
You make some interesting points and I don't disagree with some of your conclusions, however it is important to keep in mind that "barbaric" is a pejorative referring to a lack of "civilized" influences. The very notion of civilization is that individuals must sacrifice certain behaviors in order to benefit from the synergies of group participation. People who cannot, for whatever reason, conform to a certain minimal extent must be ostracized, for the good of the group.
I don't necessarily disagree, but you might find it interesting to read about the Native American / First Nations systems of justice prior to European colonization. In particular, natives who committed "crimes" would be made to sit with victims in a tent with elders until the elders decided that there was appropriate empathy and repentance by the accused. In contrast, nowadays, the Elders often describe the youth who come out of modern prisons as "forever lost". While there have probably always been people who would be considered "forever lost" (i.e. those who cannot be redeemed), I think the prison system creates such people.
This is just food for thought - there are interesting alternate paradigms to the industrialized mandatory monastery.
Yes. I hold both these beliefs. The justice system is not about blame, it's about keeping criminals safe from society and (in my mind) rehabilitating them.
The U.S. justice system is founded on the monastery model of repentance. See: Michael Foucault, "Discipline & Punish". The modern-day U.S. prison system is an industrial model that seeks taxpayer rent in exchange for effectively perpetual incarceration for anything that may be classified in the public's eyes as a crime. (See: Ann Krueger's paper on "rent seeking").
You would be very hard pressed to find anyone conscious of what the system is who would describe the prison system as something that in any way rehabilitates. In the criminal justice industry (lawyers, police, judges, etc.) often it's called "criminal college": where one learns the trade and networks. The prison system stigmatizes and ostracizes - it makes travel, finding a job, getting education all more difficult; it has no benefit for prisoners (in my opinion, and according to the three federal court judges I've asked this very question of). It also has questionable benefit or society - but that's a bigger question.
You would never blame a computer for a programmer's error, but you would try to fix the bugs, and if there was a dangerous bug you couldn't fix you wouldn't use that computer.
I agree. The prison system necessarily presumes culpability - i.e. that the criminal act was conducted of one's own free will. If it were otherwise the prison system would simply be segregation of those whose relationship with society is unacceptable because of factors they are unable to change - their genetics and/or environment, and our prison system would be analogous to apartheid.
There is some persuasive evidence that many crimes including aggression, theft, and abuse can all be linked to neurological/physiological traits. Unfortunately, it appears the NIH has little motivation to study neurological conditions giving rise to choice, as a result of their choice of head.
Alas, the barbaric industrial prison complex will continue. But make no mistake, it's barbaric.
Presumably, there is a selective advantage to improved learning and memory. Presumably, there is some kind of downside that balances that selective advantage. Are there other behaviors for which the rat is impaired
As you suggest, there are two possibilities why this advantage hasn't occurred naturally:
1. It adds no selective advantage;
2. The advantage is outweighed by the costs.
There is a third possibility, namely that the set of mutations necessary to give rise to this advantage are too improbable to occur (or perhaps even fundamentally impossible).
Based on no knowledge whatsoever, I suspect that there probably is some selective advantage to higher intelligence in rats, over long enough periods of time. I hypothesize that the rats lack the ability to effectively dissipate heat from a highly active brain, and concurrently those evolutions that allow more effective dissipation of heat (e.g. baldness) are contrary to (or have never occurred concurrent with) the selective advantage of the intelligence. Perhaps we will breed intelligent, bald rats.
If any employee caused this kind of damage the customers/consumers would sue and employees would be terminated. Yet in this case, we have companies (and hence employees) that are "too big|valuable|important too fail" so they get bailed out.
It has been observed that companies that are "too big to fail" will, instead of attempting to remedy or avoid their calamity, ensure their own disaster on the basis that the have a guaranteed bail-out. This perverse incentive is one form of the moral hazard.
In essence, being too big to fail has become a form of (unpaid for/externalized) insurance against failure because you can rely on the taxpayer to bail you out. The likelihood (and amount) of a bailout increases with the magnitude of your failure.
Until we're able to manipulate genes in humans, as opposed to just lab rats, all this "XYZ has been linked to gene ABC" is pretty irrelevant.
Not if you're an insurer.
Facebook account says he's still alive.
The rumour of his death was greatly exaggerated.
Incidental to your post, one theme of Jeffrey Sach's book "The End of Poverty" is that the lack of infrastructure in the developing and especially the subsistent populations of the world is in no small part a result of the lack of population density (i.e. rurality). I think your post accords with this conclusion.
Also, how do you produce "hard evidence that there were no competition problems"? Tell them you looked really hard but couldn't find any counterevidence?
Sir-
Cite existing studies, or alternatively commission a study by a market research / auditor like PWC or Deloitte of:
1. the market effects of the merger upon the same types of products and services that are offered by both companies, which study ought to (if the merger is to be approved) indicate that there is a limited impact upon the competition in all of the significant types of products and services where both these companies presently provide products and services in the marketplace; and
2. the ability for the merged company to exclude the products and services of other companies now that the two have merged, and the likelihood and market effects of that possibility of exclusion; which study ought to (again, if the merger is to be approved) indicate that there is a limited likelihood or impact upon competition because the company can now exclude other companies from its decisions.
The prior is to recognize and prevent the creation of horizontals (i.e. the single provider of a product or service, e.g. Microsoft-OS's) and verticals (i.e. the single provider of an entire product from start to finish, e.g. Monsanto-food).
The EU commission wants to know, I suspect, whether this merger will make Oracle the only provider of certain products and services (e.g. databases), or alternatively whether it will make Oracle a single solution provider at the expense of others (i.e. bundling the Oracle database with Solaris operating systems with Sparc servers so as to exclude PostgreSQL, Linux and Intel). In the prior case there are obviously other databases, PostgreSQL, etc., and in the latter there are clear reasons why the merger wouldn't hurt the OS or server market (namely there is vibrant competition in both with Solaris). That's just my opinion, though - I don't know the details.
I agree wholeheartedly and have an anecdote to boot.
I have an Xbox 360. I copied Mass Effect onto the Xbox 360 so that it would load and run faster. I then proceeded to 'rent' a movie (Troy) in HD. It took around 30 minutes to be able to get Xbox to accept one of my credit cards (incidentally no feedback was ever given as to why it was rejecting them). Finally, the Xbox accepted a credit card I rented the movie and it refused to download because I lacked space. So I started deleting all the "little" games and so on from the Xbox (i.e. everything but Mass Effect, because I didn't want to have to wait to load the whole game back on there). Deleting all the little games took around 30 minutes because you have to individually delete every game through the user interface, and there apparently was a plethora pre-installed (how hard is a "delete every game I've never used" button?). I finally conceded that I would have to delete Mass Effect in order to be able to fit Troy onto the 20GB hard drive (this became apparent only after I had paid for the movie).
As a result of my experience, I bought a PS3 and get all my content through that. The Xbox collects dust. I'll never download another movie through Xbox again, and it's actually fairly unlikely it'll ever be turned on again. Had the Xbox come with a bigger hard drive (who even makes 20GB hard drives? honestly.), or it been cheap to get an external drive, I may have just kept using it instead of getting the PS3.
The fact is that the US has half of the world's colleges and universities
Sir-
I essentially agree with all your other statements, but am not certain the above is supported, based on a quick search on Google.
The U.S. has roughly 3300 universities (with around 17.5 million enrolment), out of around 13,000 worldwide (of which over 17 million are enrolled in roughly the top 30 of the world's largest universities). The U.S. therefore has 25% of the world's universities by number, which is seems a lot numerically but hardly half, and in any event the U.S. has a tiny fraction of the total number enrolled given that the largest 0.2% of the world's universities enrol the same number as the entire United States does in post-secondary school.
This comment on numbers is just a statistical observation I noted when I just did a google search, and it says nothing of the quality of the education available outside the United States (or variability of it therein).
Excuse me IANAL, but isn't the truth never libelous? Even opinion is supposed to receive the utmost protection. Libel is reserved for those know knowingly lie simply to inflict harm. I mean sure the RIAA doesn't agree with Ray's angle, but since when is well stated opinion backed by dozens of sources, and agreed upon by pretty much everybody who isn't a RIAA fascist suddenly become illegal to share? Thank god the judge dismissed it, but the fact that he didn't slap them in hard for trying to silence a critic makes me understand why in the eyes of the law, we the people are fucked.
I recall there being a number of philosophical thoughts on the relationship between libel and truth. The first I recall is that in general libel is any written statement that causes harm. You can claim for damages from libel anyone who makes a statement that causes harm. However, if the written statement was true, that is a complete defence to claims for libel.
The second school of thought I recall is that libel is any untrue statement that causes harm. Therefore you can only claim for damages where the written statements cause harm and the statements were untrue.
In the first scenario one can sue for any harm by way of written statements, and the defendant may allege as a defence (and must prove) that they were true statements. In the second scenario one can only sue for untrue statements and must show that the harmful statements were untrue. In other words, the onus of bearing the burden of proof shifts and the type of allegations change.
In both these cases, true statements prevent you from being responsible in law for damages resulting from the written statements - but through different legal mechanisms. There are other schools of thought, however, and your mileage may vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction - there are places where the truth is not a defence, particularly if that truth was gotten through deceit or in violation of privacy laws. There are more differences between the two schools of thought above, and the differences are subtle, but they can have significant effects procedurally and practically.
The history of Sony's management is quite fascinating. I've lost the link, but I recall there being an article about Sony's decision over who to replace their then-CEO around 1999 (Norio Ohga), who had been CEO for ages and brought Sony to new economic heights. The choice of his successor was either the head of Sony Entertainment (i.e. the copyright/media side of Sony) or the head of Sony Computer (i.e. the head of the electronics side). They ended up choosing the head of the copyright/media side of Sony, Nobuyuki Idei.
Anecdotally, since that decision, I've noticed that Sony's technology shine has dropped completely off my radar (i.e. I don't even turn to them to find out what the latest and greatest tech is, whereas at one point they were certainly a contender for something that I'd consider cool), while their foray into rent-seeking for their copyright has also gone off the deep end.
I might be wrong about the details of the history - I'd be interested in finding the article again, or having the background.
If it's true, I believe the change in the "personality" or "culture" of Sony reflects the decision that they made to make the head of their copyright/media division the head of the company. I believe their shareholders have been paying for that decision ever since.