It doesn't matter what the market conditions are, slavery is wrong, and that's basically what a non-compete is: slavery. To get a decent job today, you need to spend years of your life, and thousands of dollars, just to get in the door. And then, for the privileged of working for a company, you're supposed to sign a piece of paper that says, essentially, "if you aren't working for us, you aren't allowed to work at all"? No, you are giving up working for a competing company in exchange for something else of value! Why I shouldn't be free to sign away my labor or put any other restrictions on it in a mutually-beneficial exchange is entirely beyond me.
but you don't actually have a legal right to work in your occupation if you've signed a broad non-compete that forbids it. Generally, contracts of the form "you can't do X because you willingly and knowingly signed an agreement not to do X" are a reasonable exchange of one thing of value for another. Non-competition is a service just like any other -- one that individuals ought to be free to sell for whatever price they see fit. Or do you presume to tell others what they can and cannot do with their time?
We don't misunderstand the economics. We have notions of structuring the rules of a market around certain rights such as "An employment contract may not regulate what the employee does with their non-working hours." I consider it a fairly serious insult for another man to tell me to which contracts I may consent -- it implies that I'm unable to think for myself and handle my own interests competently.
Sometimes noble notions end up with a kind of condescending ring to them.
It's a shame he signed such a shitty contract -- perhaps this can be a lesson to read your contracts wisely instead of complaining about clauses you don't like after the fact.
By the way, since I presume your friend is an intelligent chap, I wouldn't dare insult him to insinuate that he is incompetent to enter into a binding contract. It seems much more plausible that he made an error of judgment, that's all.
A significant portion of the American public are in favour of the Bush administration, the Iraq war and torture. And in a democracy, they deserve representation, no matter how abhorrent their ideals. Nobody ever claimed democratic government would always get the right answer, only that the answer would be (somewhat) representative of the populace. It is better than a populace that supports torture should get a government policy supporting torture than to have their authority usurped to right a temporary wrong (and torture is no doubt, in the absolute sense, wrong).
Nack. The Bill of Rights gives us freedom from search and seizure without due process of law. I'm sorry but that's just not correct sir. The 4A gives you freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. That qualifier is quite important because border searches have long been considered reasonable since they are the fundamental expression of territorial sovereignty. Perhaps a new law (or even a new Constitutional amendment) needs to be passed to clarify the 'reasonableness' requirements from search and seizure, but its quite clear that the Bill of Rights did not contemplate requiring every search to be incident to a warrant.
Ok, I'm shocked to have to speak for Jack Thompson since I do not endorse his positions or tactics in any way whatsoever.
That said, his complaint was not the lack of parental controls but that the ESRB, the body that provides the ratings, was corrupt and in the hands of the video game industry. Specifically, he asserted that the GTA's (just as example) should get an AO because they involve cop-killing and other anti-social activities. IOW, he thinks the ESRB takes a very literal approach to rating when they should be taking a holistic approach and rating games based on the perceived social consequences.
Of course he's nuts, but I think it's important to understand his point here because there is a nugget of truth -- parental control systems are only as good as the rating system.
Even Intel didn't want it to live that long. The 8086 was hack, a beefed up 8085 (8-bit, a better 8080) and they wanted to replace it with a better design, but iAPX 432 turned out to be a desaster.
The attempts to improve the design with 80286 and 80386 were not very successful... they merely did the same shit to the 8086 that the 8086 already did to the 8085: double the register size, this time adding a prefix "E" instead of the suffix "X". Oh, and they added the protected mode... which is nice, but looks like a hack compared to other processors, IMHO. Perhaps this can be taken as a lesson that it is more fruitful to evolve the same design for the sake of continuity than to start fresh with a new design. The only really successful example I can think of a revolutionary design was OS-X, and even that took two major revisions (10.2) to be fully usable. Meanwhile, Linux still operates based on APIs and other conventions from the 70s, the internet has all this web 2.0 stuff running over HTTP 1.1, which itself runs on TCP -- old, old technology.
The first instinct of the engineer is always to tear it down and build it again, it is a useful function of the PHB (gasp!) that he prevents this from happening all the time.
The reason your bank can use a digital image for your check is because Congress created a legally binding document called a "substitute check" (this was in the wake of 911 when paper checks were stuck on the ground for 3 days). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Check_21_Act. Before that act, the original dead-tree check had to be sent to the account bearer's bank for actual processing.
I would be wary of stretching that logic to apply to any legal document -- if scanned documents were valid, banks could have been doing this with checks before the intervention of Congress. Then again, I don't know why faxed documents are presumed any better.
Of course this scares the bejaysus out of the government. It would mean any computer and minimal hardware could bypass all government regulation. It also means that every ***hole with a powerful antenna could wipe out TV and cell reception for blocks around. A more sly person would let the normal TV content through but replace the ads with his own. Or degrade the quality of his competitor's cell phones. Or any other damn thing he wants to do that interferes with other's use of the airwaves.
Don't get me wrong, I agree that the FCC is as ham-fisted as most of the government (i.e. two hams in each fist and two more in the pockets) and is largely counterproductive but the fundamental proposition that spectrum is a scarce resource is still sound. Complete deregulation of the airwaves would be a classical tragedy-of-the-commons situation: every individual and company would have the incentive to blast his or her signal as powerfully as they could afford with no regard for interference of others. There is considerable public benefit to allocating the various parts of the spectrum by free and fair auction to private use for a limited duration of time.
Your non-citation of studies and invocation of UWB as a panacea do not help your cause. I cannot imagine any cell phone system that works without allocating the spectrum and regulating the devices. Being as cell phones are the technological innovation that has made the most difference to the average person, any scheme that destroys them is a non-starter (unless you believe that technology should only benefit those on the cutting edge -- I don't think that's defensible and I think if you want to have any traction with the average citizen, you need to acknowledge that the vast majority prefer a black-box implementation of a cell phone that just works).
Oh, any GnuRadio is freaking awesome -- I use it all the time. I just don't believe the crypto-anarchist bullshit that pretends that society is so advanced that we can transcend the laws of physics by invoking good-will among men and magical technological devices. The real test of any system is this: can a malicious, careless or just plain greedy individual ruin it for the rest of us. If yes, then the system is unsuitable for application to humanity as it currently exists (would that it weren't so).
Do you have any idea how much it costs to get uncontended internet? In the US, $300/mo gets you a T1 (1.5/1.5).
For the vast majority of consumers, if they were forced to use an ISP that didn't "sell more capacity than they can deliver", e.g. an uncontended line, they would prefer not to buy internet at all.
The (sad, perhaps) fact of internet service provision is that without pushing contention to 10~20, prices would be beyond the average consumer's desire to pay for internet.
i wish people would stop saying false dichotomy, it makes me feel uncomfortable... a false set of mutually exclusive groups? how does that even work? In order to be a proper dichotomy, you must partition the elements into two jointly exhaustive, mutually exclusive, groups. Usually when people complain of a false dichotomy they are attacking the jointly exhaustive bit, not the exclusive bit -- i.e. you have divided the set into parts but some elements were left behind.
First off, concealed carry is the exact opposite of theater because you never advertise that you have a weapon unless absolutely necessary. Even with a permit, drawing a weapon without good cause is a severe crime.
Secondly, not only is it not security theater, it's effective security because even a small fraction of citizens are armed it vastly increases the likely cost of committing a crime. For instance, the average time served for rape in the US is 4-5 years with a roughly 50% chance of conviction: 2 effective years. On the other hand, if only 2% of women carry guns then a would-be rapist is now facing a much larger potential cost.
Thirdly, I support the 2A and CCW on the fundamental principle of human freedom. An activity that does not cause concrete and particularized harm to another human being cannot properly be the subject of government regulation.
How is this not off-topic or just a downright troll? We're discussing a bill about genetic discrimination and you have to rant about the President's other policies?
I suppose while we are at it, I'll bite since it's been bugging me to hell:
I'm sick of this bullshit about Bush not caring about the Constitution. If you want my opinion, I absolutely agree that he has asserted powers well beyond those arrogating to him by the Constitution. Ascribing such actions to ill-will, however, is such a huge stretch that I can't even comprehend how its made. George W. Bush loves the Constitution, probably even too much since he appears to be willing to do anything (things that I disagree with entirely) to defend it from the threats that he perceives (most of which aren't there or been exaggerated beyond belief).
He might be wrong, wrongheaded, stubborn, stupid or downright delusional (I'll vouch for the first three) but to impugn his patriotism is to lower yourself to the sleazy level of him and Cheney when they questioned the patriotism of those that questioned Iraq. I thought liberals were better than that and I thought that "Mr Change" Obama would say something different but all I hear is the same shit: "my opponent hates the Constitution" and never "my opponent and I have serious disagreements about what the Constitution means and the nature and severity of the threats against it".
True enough, although remember that Canada does not have the history of oppressed minorities that the US does. I'm not in favor of affirmative action but I am sympathetic to its fundamental goals (e.g. it's a question of means, not ends). At any rate, affirmative action is not imposed on private corporations by the government -- unlike laws against invidious discrimination.
I never claimed we were perfect, but in the area of free speech I'd take the US scheme over any other in a heartbeat. Anyone not old enough to remember The Pentagon Papers ought to read that chapter of history very carefully.
Ah yes, free speech in the glorious USA means I can join the KKK, actively proclaim that the holocaust didn't actually happen and engage in racism/sexism, so long as it is done under the guise of 'free speech'... Care to explain how any of those things are not speech (well, the racism/sexism part is ambiguous -- do you mean having/talking about those views or discriminating against someone in hiring/renting/business/etc . . )? It's not a guise, it's a principle.
Of course, every reasonable person would want to stop the KKK, holocaust deniers and is generally against racism and sexism. Those of us that stand up for those rights don't disagree - we just think the cost of allowing the gov't to proscribe some speech is worse than just living with that speech. It comes down to an unwillingness to allow any one point of view, no matter how wonderful or evidently right, to become an orthodoxy imposed by the gov't. After all, if the KKK is such a terrible idea, it will eventually die out (and pretty much has).
There is only one acceptable response to "bad speech" and that is "good speech" correcting it and persuading people that you are right. If you have to restrict speech that is opposed to your values then you must not have much faith in the power of your ideas.
How can you say canada gets the epic fail when it comes to technology? I have 20/5 Mbit unshaped fiber optic internet to my home for $50/month (Verizon FIOS) and unlimited 1Mbit/256 EVDO mobile internet to my phone for another $20US/month (Sprint SERO).
I buy all my music (and not very much of it) so I don't have to worry about the RIAA. As far as free speech, I think it's sufficient to note that the Supreme Court of Canada has interpreted freedom of speech as subservient to some of the other goals in the Charter of Rights:
The effect of this type of material is to reinforce male-female stereotypes to the detriment of both sexes. It attempts to make degradation, humiliation, victimization and violence in human relationships appear normal and acceptable. A society which holds that egalitarianism, non-violence, consensualism, and mutuality are basic to any human interaction, whether sexual or other, is clearly justified in controlling and prohibiting any medium of depiction, description or advocacy which violates these principles (R. v. Butler, 1992] 1 S.C.R. 452, at p. 494, citing the MacGuigan Report of 1978). In Keegstra, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld convictions for similarly vague "hate speech", e.g. ""promoting hatred against an identifiable group". More broadly, a report summarizes it thusly:
The Supreme Court has ruled that the government may limit free speech in the name of goals such as ending discrimination, ensuring social harmony, or promoting gender equality. It also has ruled that the benefits of limiting hate speech and promoting equality are sufficient to outweigh the freedom of speech clause in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which is the country's bill of rights incorporated in the country's constitution. . .. The US is not having a good decade (ok, that's an understatement) but at least we are free from the coercive power of a government that insists on furthering multiculturalism agenda by force (not that I oppose multiculturalism or tolerance, but even good ideas ought not to be coerced). Despite my abiding hatred of racism, I am proud to live in a country were it is legal to burn a cross to make your point of view, no matter how odious that POV is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._A._V._v._City_of_St._Paul.
I should make clear that I regard both Canada and the US as at the forefront of modern liberty and well ahead of the rest of the world in that respect. Disagreements between us are disagreements on common values -- they demonstrate that we are closer than further (in a manner of speaking).
I don't think that's right. The Court's ruling on books and film have always treated them as expressive even if they were sold with commercial intent (which was always the case). In order to qualify as commercial speech, it is a necessary element that the speech includes "representations of fact about the speaker's own business operations for the purpose of promoting sales of its products". So long as your work (GTA IV, Mercenaries II) purports to be an act of fiction you are clear of the commercial speech limitations to the 1A -- good luck with the obscenity/indecency/nuisance parts.
In fact, the framers debated the a version of the 1A that put a direct exclusion on false fact:
The people shall not be deprived of their right to speak, to write, or otherwise to publish anything but false facts affecting injuriously the life, liberty, or reputation of others . . .. See http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?navby=case&court=US&vol=376&invol=254 NY Times not guilty of slander despite the clear commercial nature of the Times paper.
Basically, he hates the 1st Amendment, and isn't afraid to make a ridicules lawsuit to try and censor people. There are a lot of very smart people that believe that the 1st Amendment does not protect obscene speech -- including two Justices on the US Supreme Court. They don't hate the Amendment, they just disagree with you on what counts and 'speech' that is worthy of protection -- in their mind, obscene speech doesn't even get in the door.
Their reasoning is that the 1A is intended to protect expressive conduct (which is why you can burn the US flag even though it's not technically speech -- it's expressive conduct). Pornography, to them, is not speech for the purpose of expressing ideas but rather "titillation of prurient interest". As much as I don't agree with them, I have to respect that their interpretation is not unreasonable or ridiculous and that they are, in fact, intelligent people that love freedom as much as I do despite our serious philosophical difference about the meaning of that freedom.
We are more permissive of government regulation in these circumstances because it is clear from the context in which exchanges between such businesses and their customers occur that neither the merchant nor the buyer is interested in the work's literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. "The deliberate representation of petitioner's publications as erotically arousing . . . stimulate[s] the reader to accept them as prurient; he looks for titillation, not for saving intellectual content." Thus, a business that "(1) offer[s]... hardcore sexual material, (2) as a constant and intentional objective of [its] business, [and] (3) seek[s] to promote it as such" finds no sanctuary in the First Amendment. Justice Scalia, Dissenting in US v. Playboy http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/98-1682.ZD.html (internal citations stripped)
Well, IAAL so I'm going to take a stab at it here:
but what if you drop coils under high-power transmission lines to garner free electricity? Let's suppose that there were power-company high-voltage lines over your property (usually they buy the strip of property right underneath). In that case, putting coils underneath would disrupt their service (by draining power) which is a crime (tampering with or disrupting an interstate power delivery system).
what if you tune in on HBO or skinamax without a subscription? HBO and Cinimax are encrypted. Breaking their encryption is not different than me breaking your phone encryptions
what if you slurp a optical link between two banks using an IR bridge? This is a good one, since the intervening air is
how about reading vibrations off a window with a laser to listen in on a conversation? or with a shotgun microphone Eavesdropping is a crime in most states because of the content issue.
what if I'm standing across 86th ave in NYC in my apartment, looking into your bedroom making love to the wife, or the family dog? Perfectly legal and I see no moral problem either. I have blinds, I know how to use them.
these are all forms of 'radiation' that I can percieve, without entering your person or property.... But the major distinction is whether you are impinging on something that was intended to be private.
Generally speaking, when you broadcast electromagnetic waves you lose any ownership or privacy interest in their existence (note that the content of the message is distinct from the existence of the message). So while the equipment might be yours, the radiation is public and you have no right whatsoever to dictate what happens to them.
You don't want to be tracked by your cell phone, turn it off.
But as the RIAA itself likes to confuse criminal with civil statutes for propaganda purposes (often referencing "piracy" and "theft"), I went along arguing upon as if that rationale was pretended to be legitimate, for the sake of argument. And why not expect such a "making available" clause to be attempted to be inserted into the civil statute? It's not necessarily a waste of time to argue AS IF it could someday be a civil statute clause.
That would certainly make your life a lot harder.
And how about the "woeful understanding" of constitutional law by *lawyers* who pass laws? Fuck the "plain language of the statute". It doesn't mean it isn't garbage.
Sorry, the statute was passed by "The People" and so has quite a bit more legitimacy than people arguing on the internet. Perhaps it is garbage but since it's the law, and since it is well within the powers of Congress to regulate interstate communications systems (both criminally and civilly, to a limit, e.g. Reno v. ACLU -- delineating the limits to some extent), your complaint is best addressed at the vast numbers of people that continue to elect pro-copyright legislators (which I happen to think are wrong, mind you -- I would vastly reform copyright law myself if I were Congress).
It's still a ridiculous unconstitutional law, without even a pretense of defining "making available", a violation of the 8th Amendment for every feasible possible "ON" statute example. Watching a movie on your laptop which is wireless connected to the internet is technically "making it available on a computer network accessible to members of the public". The computer is connected to the network and people walking by as you eat your lunch in a public space can see the movie, can secretly make a copy if you leave the laptop on the lunch table to go to the restroom. It sounds like "members of the public" just means *everybody* who is not the copyright holder and not acting a government official capacity.
If you wrote this in my Constitutional Law class, I would fail you.
The statute is not too vague for the 8A since it proscribes a very specific act -- the intentional making available. Simply watching a movie on your laptop is not making it available even if others can watch the screen because it is not available on the computer network. You would have to copy it to a shared folder or share the folder in which it resides, in order to be guilty of that crime. Also, "members of the public" actually means something very specific in legal parlance and it's not what you think it means -- it means something along the lines of "generally accessible". For instance, if you rip a CD and make it available on your private home network, that wouldn't count since your home network is not "generally accessible". In reality, of course, it refers only to the internet at large -- if a random person can access it from the internet without a password it qualifies.
The first time someone attempts to throw a citizen in jail (or file any criminal charges whatsoever) for posting a picture of their car on an internet website (technically "making available" a copyrighted image owned by the car manufacturer), this law will be tossed into the dumpster unanimously at both the Appellate and Supreme Court levels.
Actually, it is fairly undisputed (although not conclusively settled) that a photographer owns the copyright to every photo that he takes (to the extent that they are not verbatim reproductions of another copyright work -- you can't just take a photo of a photo and claim it as your own). In the case of Ford Mustangs and the Black Mustang Calendar, however, Ford asserted that their trademark on the various brand-names. That trademark fairly clearly prohibits others from commercially publishing a calendar that makes use of their trademarks. If you want to demonstrate your misunderstanding of Trademark law, feel free to do so.
Just to be clear, it is perfectly legal to take photogr
First of all, let's be clear that we are talking about a criminal case, not a civil case (since you are quarreling with the "making available" statue. Therefore, it's not nothing to do with the RIAA and absolutely nothing to do with damages in any monetary amount whatsoever. This is purely a criminal statue that provides for jail time.
Well "making an image of the hard drive and presenting the contents as evidence" would be MAKING AVAILABLE the entirety of the contents on that hard drive! Is the RIAA or Federal Government going to be held liable for willful infringement to the tune of $30,000 per copyrighted file "made available" to the Court or any other parties for content that is not the copyright of the RIAA or government?
Read the law again, it's making available on a public computer network -- evidence in trials is not put on public computer networks.
Even given your woeful understanding of the plain language of the statute, there is a general exemption for officers of the court, e.g. the prosecutor can introduce a gun into evidence without being guilty of bringing a gun into a court. Every forensic lab tech that tested drugs is likewise not guilty of possession of narcotics. I thought this was simple common sense but apparently not.
I guess Microsoft can't complain about reverse engineering of their operating system by non-Microsoft parties if that operating system happens to be installed on a computer being "examined" (whatever the hell that means) for copyright infringement?
Reading the timestamps and looking at login records does not qualify as reverse engineering.
Why can the RIAA examine all files on the internet without penalty on the pretext of checking that the contents aren't violating their copyrights but every individual P2P user cannot also examine all files on the internet without penalty to make sure the contents aren't violating their copyrights too?
Patently false. You can examine any file made available on the internet for your copyrights. The RIAA has no more right to examine your files than the level of access you give to the public -- they are not acting in any law enforcement capacity here (this is civil law). If you don't want to give access to the RIAA, put a password on your server. They have exactly the same rights on the internet you do!
By the way, you've already confused civil suits (the RIAA asserting a private tort) with criminal charges (the Federal government levying criminal charges). Please stick to one or the other.
If you're going to start seizing and examining computers for copyright violation fishing expeditions, every business, government entity, and individual person is going to have claims for seizure and examination from every other business and person.
I'm going to break this down into criminal and civil:
Criminal: The gov't may seize, upon probable cause and pursuant to a duly signed warrant, any items that contain or consist of relevant evidence in a criminal trial. This is the case for all crimes and is fairly well settled.
Civil: There is no "seizure", since there is no government action. The process goes like this: first you file a lawsuit alleging some non-trivial tort. Second, if the court finds that your claim has enough merit to proceed to trial, you enter discovery where you can obtain an order to have the defendant submit their computers to a court-approved expert that will make an image of the hard drives. Third, now that the image is made and secured, the prosecution and defense agree for a protocol by which information is gleaned (you don't just get to read their emails and pr0n willy-nilly). Take Civ Pro 101.
So when a business like the RIAA is found to violate some GPL license, all the computers in their business operations can be seized and examined for the purpose of discovery, effectively shutting that business down?
[NOTE: the is civil law, not criminal] If you sue the R
Slashdot Mirror
Sometimes noble notions end up with a kind of condescending ring to them.
It's a shame he signed such a shitty contract -- perhaps this can be a lesson to read your contracts wisely instead of complaining about clauses you don't like after the fact.
By the way, since I presume your friend is an intelligent chap, I wouldn't dare insult him to insinuate that he is incompetent to enter into a binding contract. It seems much more plausible that he made an error of judgment, that's all.
The faults of some candidates do not, by themselves, make other candidates worthy. It's about time we learned that.
Ok, I'm shocked to have to speak for Jack Thompson since I do not endorse his positions or tactics in any way whatsoever.
That said, his complaint was not the lack of parental controls but that the ESRB, the body that provides the ratings, was corrupt and in the hands of the video game industry. Specifically, he asserted that the GTA's (just as example) should get an AO because they involve cop-killing and other anti-social activities. IOW, he thinks the ESRB takes a very literal approach to rating when they should be taking a holistic approach and rating games based on the perceived social consequences.
Of course he's nuts, but I think it's important to understand his point here because there is a nugget of truth -- parental control systems are only as good as the rating system.
The attempts to improve the design with 80286 and 80386 were not very successful... they merely did the same shit to the 8086 that the 8086 already did to the 8085: double the register size, this time adding a prefix "E" instead of the suffix "X". Oh, and they added the protected mode... which is nice, but looks like a hack compared to other processors, IMHO. Perhaps this can be taken as a lesson that it is more fruitful to evolve the same design for the sake of continuity than to start fresh with a new design. The only really successful example I can think of a revolutionary design was OS-X, and even that took two major revisions (10.2) to be fully usable. Meanwhile, Linux still operates based on APIs and other conventions from the 70s, the internet has all this web 2.0 stuff running over HTTP 1.1, which itself runs on TCP -- old, old technology.
The first instinct of the engineer is always to tear it down and build it again, it is a useful function of the PHB (gasp!) that he prevents this from happening all the time.
The reason your bank can use a digital image for your check is because Congress created a legally binding document called a "substitute check" (this was in the wake of 911 when paper checks were stuck on the ground for 3 days). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Check_21_Act. Before that act, the original dead-tree check had to be sent to the account bearer's bank for actual processing.
I would be wary of stretching that logic to apply to any legal document -- if scanned documents were valid, banks could have been doing this with checks before the intervention of Congress. Then again, I don't know why faxed documents are presumed any better.
Don't get me wrong, I agree that the FCC is as ham-fisted as most of the government (i.e. two hams in each fist and two more in the pockets) and is largely counterproductive but the fundamental proposition that spectrum is a scarce resource is still sound. Complete deregulation of the airwaves would be a classical tragedy-of-the-commons situation: every individual and company would have the incentive to blast his or her signal as powerfully as they could afford with no regard for interference of others. There is considerable public benefit to allocating the various parts of the spectrum by free and fair auction to private use for a limited duration of time.
Your non-citation of studies and invocation of UWB as a panacea do not help your cause. I cannot imagine any cell phone system that works without allocating the spectrum and regulating the devices. Being as cell phones are the technological innovation that has made the most difference to the average person, any scheme that destroys them is a non-starter (unless you believe that technology should only benefit those on the cutting edge -- I don't think that's defensible and I think if you want to have any traction with the average citizen, you need to acknowledge that the vast majority prefer a black-box implementation of a cell phone that just works).
Oh, any GnuRadio is freaking awesome -- I use it all the time. I just don't believe the crypto-anarchist bullshit that pretends that society is so advanced that we can transcend the laws of physics by invoking good-will among men and magical technological devices. The real test of any system is this: can a malicious, careless or just plain greedy individual ruin it for the rest of us. If yes, then the system is unsuitable for application to humanity as it currently exists (would that it weren't so).
Do you have any idea how much it costs to get uncontended internet? In the US, $300/mo gets you a T1 (1.5/1.5).
For the vast majority of consumers, if they were forced to use an ISP that didn't "sell more capacity than they can deliver", e.g. an uncontended line, they would prefer not to buy internet at all.
The (sad, perhaps) fact of internet service provision is that without pushing contention to 10~20, prices would be beyond the average consumer's desire to pay for internet.
Yay for classical logic!
First off, concealed carry is the exact opposite of theater because you never advertise that you have a weapon unless absolutely necessary. Even with a permit, drawing a weapon without good cause is a severe crime.
Secondly, not only is it not security theater, it's effective security because even a small fraction of citizens are armed it vastly increases the likely cost of committing a crime. For instance, the average time served for rape in the US is 4-5 years with a roughly 50% chance of conviction: 2 effective years. On the other hand, if only 2% of women carry guns then a would-be rapist is now facing a much larger potential cost.
Thirdly, I support the 2A and CCW on the fundamental principle of human freedom. An activity that does not cause concrete and particularized harm to another human being cannot properly be the subject of government regulation.
How is this not off-topic or just a downright troll? We're discussing a bill about genetic discrimination and you have to rant about the President's other policies?
I suppose while we are at it, I'll bite since it's been bugging me to hell:
I'm sick of this bullshit about Bush not caring about the Constitution. If you want my opinion, I absolutely agree that he has asserted powers well beyond those arrogating to him by the Constitution. Ascribing such actions to ill-will, however, is such a huge stretch that I can't even comprehend how its made. George W. Bush loves the Constitution, probably even too much since he appears to be willing to do anything (things that I disagree with entirely) to defend it from the threats that he perceives (most of which aren't there or been exaggerated beyond belief).
He might be wrong, wrongheaded, stubborn, stupid or downright delusional (I'll vouch for the first three) but to impugn his patriotism is to lower yourself to the sleazy level of him and Cheney when they questioned the patriotism of those that questioned Iraq. I thought liberals were better than that and I thought that "Mr Change" Obama would say something different but all I hear is the same shit: "my opponent hates the Constitution" and never "my opponent and I have serious disagreements about what the Constitution means and the nature and severity of the threats against it".
True enough, although remember that Canada does not have the history of oppressed minorities that the US does. I'm not in favor of affirmative action but I am sympathetic to its fundamental goals (e.g. it's a question of means, not ends). At any rate, affirmative action is not imposed on private corporations by the government -- unlike laws against invidious discrimination.
I never claimed we were perfect, but in the area of free speech I'd take the US scheme over any other in a heartbeat. Anyone not old enough to remember The Pentagon Papers ought to read that chapter of history very carefully.
Of course, every reasonable person would want to stop the KKK, holocaust deniers and is generally against racism and sexism. Those of us that stand up for those rights don't disagree - we just think the cost of allowing the gov't to proscribe some speech is worse than just living with that speech. It comes down to an unwillingness to allow any one point of view, no matter how wonderful or evidently right, to become an orthodoxy imposed by the gov't. After all, if the KKK is such a terrible idea, it will eventually die out (and pretty much has).
There is only one acceptable response to "bad speech" and that is "good speech" correcting it and persuading people that you are right. If you have to restrict speech that is opposed to your values then you must not have much faith in the power of your ideas.
I buy all my music (and not very much of it) so I don't have to worry about the RIAA. As far as free speech, I think it's sufficient to note that the Supreme Court of Canada has interpreted freedom of speech as subservient to some of the other goals in the Charter of Rights: The effect of this type of material is to reinforce male-female stereotypes to the detriment of both sexes. It attempts to make degradation, humiliation, victimization and violence in human relationships appear normal and acceptable. A society which holds that egalitarianism, non-violence, consensualism, and mutuality are basic to any human interaction, whether sexual or other, is clearly justified in controlling and prohibiting any medium of depiction, description or advocacy which violates these principles (R. v. Butler, 1992] 1 S.C.R. 452, at p. 494, citing the MacGuigan Report of 1978). In Keegstra, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld convictions for similarly vague "hate speech", e.g. ""promoting hatred against an identifiable group". More broadly, a report summarizes it thusly: The Supreme Court has ruled that the government may limit free speech in the name of goals such as ending discrimination, ensuring social harmony, or promoting gender equality. It also has ruled that the benefits of limiting hate speech and promoting equality are sufficient to outweigh the freedom of speech clause in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which is the country's bill of rights incorporated in the country's constitution. . .
I should make clear that I regard both Canada and the US as at the forefront of modern liberty and well ahead of the rest of the world in that respect. Disagreements between us are disagreements on common values -- they demonstrate that we are closer than further (in a manner of speaking).
See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._v._Butler
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._v._Keegstra
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._v._Andrews
In fact, the framers debated the a version of the 1A that put a direct exclusion on false fact: The people shall not be deprived of their right to speak, to write, or otherwise to publish anything but false facts affecting injuriously the life, liberty, or reputation of others . . .
Their reasoning is that the 1A is intended to protect expressive conduct (which is why you can burn the US flag even though it's not technically speech -- it's expressive conduct). Pornography, to them, is not speech for the purpose of expressing ideas but rather "titillation of prurient interest". As much as I don't agree with them, I have to respect that their interpretation is not unreasonable or ridiculous and that they are, in fact, intelligent people that love freedom as much as I do despite our serious philosophical difference about the meaning of that freedom. We are more permissive of government regulation in these circumstances because it is clear from the context in which exchanges between such businesses and their customers occur that neither the merchant nor the buyer is interested in the work's literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. "The deliberate representation of petitioner's publications as erotically arousing . . . stimulate[s] the reader to accept them as prurient; he looks for titillation, not for saving intellectual content." Thus, a business that "(1) offer[s]
Generally speaking, when you broadcast electromagnetic waves you lose any ownership or privacy interest in their existence (note that the content of the message is distinct from the existence of the message). So while the equipment might be yours, the radiation is public and you have no right whatsoever to dictate what happens to them.
You don't want to be tracked by your cell phone, turn it off.
But as the RIAA itself likes to confuse criminal with civil statutes for propaganda purposes (often referencing "piracy" and "theft"), I went along arguing upon as if that rationale was pretended to be legitimate, for the sake of argument. And why not expect such a "making available" clause to be attempted to be inserted into the civil statute? It's not necessarily a waste of time to argue AS IF it could someday be a civil statute clause.
That would certainly make your life a lot harder.
And how about the "woeful understanding" of constitutional law by *lawyers* who pass laws? Fuck the "plain language of the statute". It doesn't mean it isn't garbage.
Sorry, the statute was passed by "The People" and so has quite a bit more legitimacy than people arguing on the internet. Perhaps it is garbage but since it's the law, and since it is well within the powers of Congress to regulate interstate communications systems (both criminally and civilly, to a limit, e.g. Reno v. ACLU -- delineating the limits to some extent), your complaint is best addressed at the vast numbers of people that continue to elect pro-copyright legislators (which I happen to think are wrong, mind you -- I would vastly reform copyright law myself if I were Congress).
It's still a ridiculous unconstitutional law, without even a pretense of defining "making available", a violation of the 8th Amendment for every feasible possible "ON" statute example. Watching a movie on your laptop which is wireless connected to the internet is technically "making it available on a computer network accessible to members of the public". The computer is connected to the network and people walking by as you eat your lunch in a public space can see the movie, can secretly make a copy if you leave the laptop on the lunch table to go to the restroom. It sounds like "members of the public" just means *everybody* who is not the copyright holder and not acting a government official capacity.
If you wrote this in my Constitutional Law class, I would fail you.
The statute is not too vague for the 8A since it proscribes a very specific act -- the intentional making available. Simply watching a movie on your laptop is not making it available even if others can watch the screen because it is not available on the computer network. You would have to copy it to a shared folder or share the folder in which it resides, in order to be guilty of that crime. Also, "members of the public" actually means something very specific in legal parlance and it's not what you think it means -- it means something along the lines of "generally accessible". For instance, if you rip a CD and make it available on your private home network, that wouldn't count since your home network is not "generally accessible". In reality, of course, it refers only to the internet at large -- if a random person can access it from the internet without a password it qualifies.
The first time someone attempts to throw a citizen in jail (or file any criminal charges whatsoever) for posting a picture of their car on an internet website (technically "making available" a copyrighted image owned by the car manufacturer), this law will be tossed into the dumpster unanimously at both the Appellate and Supreme Court levels.
Actually, it is fairly undisputed (although not conclusively settled) that a photographer owns the copyright to every photo that he takes (to the extent that they are not verbatim reproductions of another copyright work -- you can't just take a photo of a photo and claim it as your own). In the case of Ford Mustangs and the Black Mustang Calendar, however, Ford asserted that their trademark on the various brand-names. That trademark fairly clearly prohibits others from commercially publishing a calendar that makes use of their trademarks. If you want to demonstrate your misunderstanding of Trademark law, feel free to do so.
Just to be clear, it is perfectly legal to take photogr
Well "making an image of the hard drive and presenting the contents as evidence" would be MAKING AVAILABLE the entirety of the contents on that hard drive! Is the RIAA or Federal Government going to be held liable for willful infringement to the tune of $30,000 per copyrighted file "made available" to the Court or any other parties for content that is not the copyright of the RIAA or government?
Read the law again, it's making available on a public computer network -- evidence in trials is not put on public computer networks.
Even given your woeful understanding of the plain language of the statute, there is a general exemption for officers of the court, e.g. the prosecutor can introduce a gun into evidence without being guilty of bringing a gun into a court. Every forensic lab tech that tested drugs is likewise not guilty of possession of narcotics. I thought this was simple common sense but apparently not.
I guess Microsoft can't complain about reverse engineering of their operating system by non-Microsoft parties if that operating system happens to be installed on a computer being "examined" (whatever the hell that means) for copyright infringement?
Reading the timestamps and looking at login records does not qualify as reverse engineering.
Why can the RIAA examine all files on the internet without penalty on the pretext of checking that the contents aren't violating their copyrights but every individual P2P user cannot also examine all files on the internet without penalty to make sure the contents aren't violating their copyrights too?
Patently false. You can examine any file made available on the internet for your copyrights. The RIAA has no more right to examine your files than the level of access you give to the public -- they are not acting in any law enforcement capacity here (this is civil law). If you don't want to give access to the RIAA, put a password on your server. They have exactly the same rights on the internet you do!
By the way, you've already confused civil suits (the RIAA asserting a private tort) with criminal charges (the Federal government levying criminal charges). Please stick to one or the other.
If you're going to start seizing and examining computers for copyright violation fishing expeditions, every business, government entity, and individual person is going to have claims for seizure and examination from every other business and person.
I'm going to break this down into criminal and civil:
Criminal: The gov't may seize, upon probable cause and pursuant to a duly signed warrant, any items that contain or consist of relevant evidence in a criminal trial. This is the case for all crimes and is fairly well settled.
Civil: There is no "seizure", since there is no government action. The process goes like this: first you file a lawsuit alleging some non-trivial tort. Second, if the court finds that your claim has enough merit to proceed to trial, you enter discovery where you can obtain an order to have the defendant submit their computers to a court-approved expert that will make an image of the hard drives. Third, now that the image is made and secured, the prosecution and defense agree for a protocol by which information is gleaned (you don't just get to read their emails and pr0n willy-nilly). Take Civ Pro 101.
So when a business like the RIAA is found to violate some GPL license, all the computers in their business operations can be seized and examined for the purpose of discovery, effectively shutting that business down?
[NOTE: the is civil law, not criminal] If you sue the R