With present and near future technology, the possibility exists that "nonprivate" will now mean "every last moment taped and analyzed, your movements and activities across the entire public space tracked, cataloged, and searchable by whoever has access to the database for an unspecified period of time.
Unless you are a "high criminal" then just the right combination of machines may just have happened to fail in such a way that there is no record of your actions.
While I agree with your point that it is unaccountable government which would be the problem, I still disagree that installation of such a system will have a harmless outcome.
It's also interesting that police in both the US and the UK do not like being photographed or filmed by members of the public. Even if they arn't "treating people like a King".
The point is that you can never trust a government (people) to do what's right.
Usually trust is something which has to be earned.
I have no faith in our government to be respectful of my rights and not to misuse data.
What's most worrying is that you have government officials who have repeatedly demonstrated themselves to be untrustworthy. Yet you still have people trusting "government" (containing those people or their friends/relatives) or show trust in those individuals.
Therefore, I will bitch about the cameras and its invasion of privacy. The probability that government will abuse its power over time (in this case, information) is 1/1.
Especially where you have a political system which appears to preferentially select people who's most likely alternative "job" would be as conmen.
Everybody who believes in civil liberties and political descent should be concerned about cameras on every, heck every other, corner.
I don't see many of the "nothing to hide/nothing to fear" volunteering to have cameras in their homes. Or even just posting their address on the web and leaving their keys under the mat so someone could install some when they wern't there...
Then, once everyone gets used to a camera being on every street corner, they'll be much more willing to accept them in their homes, which is the government's ultimate goal.
But probably not in the politicans's or police chiefs' homes. Which is probably who's homes they actually should be in.
CCTV does not prevent crime. It helps to presecute those who commit it, taking them off the streets.
It may help. However in order to actually be much use you need very good cameras and a lot of data storage. There are also some very low tech methods criminals can use against cameras.
What I do not like is knowing that the Govt has all this footage and can control what is used and what isn't.... The cameras should be set up so that anyone can access the feed from them.
Then it might be more difficult to claim that the police only did bad things in front of failed cameras...
All this plugin does is speed up loading of Java applets.
Other people have complained that it slows down starting up Firefox. That is a common issue with "quick starters" they can easily slow down other things, especially when what they might "speed up" is only used very infrequently.
I see a potential (and easy) solution: Have Firefox deny addition of any add-ons without the end-user explicitly agreeing that they are OK with the addition of the add-on.
Interestingly it does make a fuss (as in requiring you to take several steps) if you attempt to install an XPI file from anywhere other than Mozilla addons site. However here a third party installer adds the extension/add-on without either the installer or Firefox even mentioning it. It's also unclear if this has been installed globally or per user. If Sun wants to provide a Firefox extension they should provide an XPI file like everyone else!
I don't get carded for buying beer , too old, but in the UK at least there are shops that ask for proof of age if you look under 30 let alone 18 which is the legal age for buying alcohol in the UK.
They started a few years back with 21 together with free advertising for http://www.drinkaware.co.uk/ sometimes also with http://www.think21.co.uk/ Since then various places have upped the quoted age, even though the actual law hasn't changed at all. Typically these inflated age signs are more numerous and more noticable than any which the actual law. The final irony is that both of these websites appear to break the law by not providing a postal address in their contact details.
Is a 14 year old capable of making an informed decision? What about an 8 year old? Maybe, but as a society we've pretty much agreed that 18 is a reasonable place to set the bar.
There are places where a 14 year old is considered capable of informed decisions. In several US states 14 is the minimum age at which people can drive on the public road. If people are considered capable of making the informed decisions required to operate a dangerous machine without causing harm to bystanders are they not also capable of making all sorts of other informed decisions? Does it not make sense that the age of consent (as well as that for age restricted legal drugs) should be no higher (and possibly lower) than the minimum driving age?
If you were going to advertise in a swingers magazine, would you care that your name and proof that you did so were to remain on file for an extended period? Do you see how somebody might mind? Might choose not to place the ad for that reason?
Is this the norm for adverts? If not then there needs to be a good case made for doing things differently for this kind of advert...
The "magical age" is because it is easier to determine someone's age than it is to administer some examination to determine fit mental condition for each and every transaction in which it is meaningful.
Except that it isn't easy to determine someone's age. Be it from a photograph/video of them or even meeting them in person. That's why you end up looking at some document to try and find out someone's age. Even that isn't always especially reliable if they are trying to decieve you. Regardless of if it's a horny teenager after sex or a 50 something after a "senior citizens'" discount.
If you aren't mature enough to stay married and raise your children, then you aren't mature enough to fuck.
This isn't mature, it isn't even funny. Considering that the propaganda surrounding the whole marriage thing leads to lots of human suffering, even premature deaths.
I said nothing about loving, though that would be desirable and expected. The key thing is that you may produce children if you fuck. (even the best birth control, short of a hysterectomy, can fail)
Tubal ligations and vasectomys are the standard techniques of surgical sterilization. Some people are congenitally sterile others whilst not technically "sterile" are incapable of producing children without medical assistance. No homosexual sex has ever produced chidren. There are even plenty of things a fully fertile man and woman can do sexually which have very little likelyhood of the woman getting pregnant even without the use of any contraception.
I'd love to hear what the divorce rates are for teen marriages.
In many places divorce rates are fairly high anyway. They'd probably be a lot higher when you factor in that the action of getting divorced tends to be considerably more difficult than getting married. AFAIK divorce "on demand" dosn't exist.
You highlight the crux of a problem. Why is it not okay for teens to fuck, unless they're married, when it all becomes somehow righteous and loving and special?
Plus with the intention of having children... Not everyone is heterosexual, not everyone is monogamous, not everyone wants children, not everyone wants "long term" relationships and so on. Human sexuality simply isn't a "one size fits all" deal.
The only thing I wanted to point out is that there isn't a silver bullet in this matter. All laws will unfairly punish somebody from time to time, and all laws will unfairly leave somebody unpunished from time to time
A really bad law can manage both at the same time. It's the job of government to ensure that either situation happens as infrequently as possible. However in order to do this requires legislators and judiciary who can think rationally. Even when the public/media isn't...
Recently, though? I see far less debate about the morality of the issue, and far more assumption that 18 (or 16) really is a magic number.
21 is another such "magic number". Other cultures, both historical and contempoary have picked different numbers. It's difficult to tell which numbers are (or were) intended to be picked according to some rational metric and which were random.
This law, for instance, is roughly like sexual harassment laws -- there is an assumed power advantage by one party (in this case, the adult, or the boss), which raises the bar for consent. The purpose is to prevent people from being taken advantage of -- from being pressured into doing something they wouldn't ordinarily do.
Getting such a law right is not simple. There will always be people who will seek to abuse laws for their own advantage. It's also too easy for a law intended to balance a percieved power disparity to actually create one.
Yet, clearly, co-workers have sex, couples even start businesses. It might be worth looking at how sexual harassment deals with these issues.
It would also be relevent to issues between students and teachers. Especially in colleges and universities.
Now, you could claim that many people do not agree with that morality. But I am also arguing morality here -- I don't think it's moral or right to have a determination of "adult" based purely on physical age, and I especially don't think an 18-year-old deserves to be listed as a sex offender for life for having a 17-year-old girlfriend.
Or a 25 or 35 year old with a 17 year old bf/gf. There is probably more to be concerned about with a 22 teacher sleeping with his/her 18 year old student. Than a 17 with a 40 yo gf/bf her/she met through a mutual interest outside school. IMHO there would be a serious problem with a 20 year old student and a 50 year old teacher. Due to how that sexual relationship would affect the teaching and learning relationship between that teacher and all their students. Age of consent dosn't always correspond with age of legal "adulthood", either.
Regardless, it's clearly out of line with the original purpose of that law -- to protect children. Or, if you want to be technical, it's completely irrelevant to the original original purpose -- to put an end to child prostitution. If that was really the purpose, well, we already have laws against prostitution.
Or rather laws against prostitution as a commercial business activity. It can be legal (even state supported) within the likes of marriage. Though alimony and "child" support are the more PC terms which tend to be used. There are also laws controlling what sort of work children can and can't do. Though it wouldn't be too much of a suprise if some of the things children can do are more exploitative than some of the things they can't.
But, if we don't do that, we're also being hypocritical, unless we change the law. A simple change, adopted by several states, is to also add an age difference -- over 18, you can fuck anyone else over 18. Under 18, 5 years difference -- so 17 and 20 is fine, but 17 and 40 is statutory rape.
Using this kind of metric can wind up equating to the same kind of discrimination as having different hetero and homosexual ages of consent.
Even that is still pretty flawed -- is she really going to be less attracted to that 40-year-old man in a few months when she's 18? -- and there have been cases where a difference of a few days or months means the difference between a healthy relationship (among teens) and getting on the sex offender list, even with laws like that.
Or young men and women are pushed into unhealthy relationships with people younger than they'd ideally want to be with. Such laws may not even be fully effective in dealing with teachers seducing students (or vice versa).
I think we should fix the law, instead of selectively enforcing it, which seems to be what you're advocating -- or at least, enforcing it universally, but having the sentence be lessened in cases we "like".
The difficulty with even attempting to "fix the law" is that it involves accepting that "teenagers" are young men and women with the same sexuality (and variations of sexual desires) as the rest of humanity. Most parts of the world have big cultural issues with human sexuality in the first place. Be it assuming that everyone is hetero-monogamous by default or outlawing prostitution as a regular commercial business. There are also issues like if you pick an "age on consent" there will be people under than age who will activly seek sex. (A few of them if you pick something like 12, a great number of them in you pick something like 18). Further with a high age of consent not only will there be a large number of sexually active people considered by the law to be "too young" there will also be a lot of situations where both/all involved in a sex act will underage.
I did not say that there was no mental capacity restriction. For example, the 3 year old would not be in a fit mental condition to make decisions, however an advanced 13 year old would be able to, similarly a mental retarded 25 year old may not be in a fit mental condition.
There are some ways to weaken these age restrictions. Yet you may well end up with strange situations like a legally emancipated person who can marry but not have sex...
The problem in our society is the magical age of 16, 18 and 21. What would be illegal to do at 17 and 360 days suddenly becomes legal 5 to 6 days later.
There is the situation with driving which has both an age and a "test" component. However it does appear daft that people considered "too young" to be photographed nude are "old enough" to operate highly dangerous machines in public.
However, if the Pirate Bay chooses this defense, the verdict might be that they have to remove torrents that break copyright on request of the copyright holder (a most likely outcome, IMHO).
If this were to happen it would also be relevent how the "copyright holder" had to prove their identity and what would happen when a bogus request was made.
If The Pirate Bay wins, the swedish laws will be changed to make sure what they've been doing would be an offence had they done it under the new law. If TPB loses, the current laws will be shown to be enough for prosecuting and convicting tracker admins.
What happens if the trial is abandoned? What is the judge finds the prosecutors in contempt of court and fines/jails them?
But this only applies to copies that are outright sold or given away;
IIRC giving something away generally is considered to be a "sale" otherwise you'd get all sorts of legal loopholes resulting from the likes of "Buy One Get One Free"...
licensing is an attempt to avoid such transfers to customers, so really the only people making things complicated are the software publishers employing EULAs.
Whilst at the same time distributing their wares in ways which look like "sales".
Slashdot Mirror
With present and near future technology, the possibility exists that "nonprivate" will now mean "every last moment taped and analyzed, your movements and activities across the entire public space tracked, cataloged, and searchable by whoever has access to the database for an unspecified period of time.
Unless you are a "high criminal" then just the right combination of machines may just have happened to fail in such a way that there is no record of your actions.
While I agree with your point that it is unaccountable government which would be the problem, I still disagree that installation of such a system will have a harmless outcome.
It's also interesting that police in both the US and the UK do not like being photographed or filmed by members of the public. Even if they arn't "treating people like a King".
The point is that you can never trust a government (people) to do what's right.
Usually trust is something which has to be earned.
I have no faith in our government to be respectful of my rights and not to misuse data.
What's most worrying is that you have government officials who have repeatedly demonstrated themselves to be untrustworthy. Yet you still have people trusting "government" (containing those people or their friends/relatives) or show trust in those individuals.
Therefore, I will bitch about the cameras and its invasion of privacy. The probability that government will abuse its power over time (in this case, information) is 1/1.
Especially where you have a political system which appears to preferentially select people who's most likely alternative "job" would be as conmen.
Everybody who believes in civil liberties and political descent should be concerned about cameras on every, heck every other, corner.
I don't see many of the "nothing to hide/nothing to fear" volunteering to have cameras in their homes. Or even just posting their address on the web and leaving their keys under the mat so someone could install some when they wern't there...
Then, once everyone gets used to a camera being on every street corner, they'll be much more willing to accept them in their homes, which is the government's ultimate goal.
But probably not in the politicans's or police chiefs' homes. Which is probably who's homes they actually should be in.
CCTV does not prevent crime. It helps to presecute those who commit it, taking them off the streets.
It may help. However in order to actually be much use you need very good cameras and a lot of data storage. There are also some very low tech methods criminals can use against cameras.
What I do not like is knowing that the Govt has all this footage and can control what is used and what isn't.... The cameras should be set up so that anyone can access the feed from them.
Then it might be more difficult to claim that the police only did bad things in front of failed cameras...
All this plugin does is speed up loading of Java applets.
Other people have complained that it slows down starting up Firefox. That is a common issue with "quick starters" they can easily slow down other things, especially when what they might "speed up" is only used very infrequently.
I see a potential (and easy) solution: Have Firefox deny addition of any add-ons without the end-user explicitly agreeing that they are OK with the addition of the add-on.
Interestingly it does make a fuss (as in requiring you to take several steps) if you attempt to install an XPI file from anywhere other than Mozilla addons site.
However here a third party installer adds the extension/add-on without either the installer or Firefox even mentioning it. It's also unclear if this has been installed globally or per user. If Sun wants to provide a Firefox extension they should provide an XPI file like everyone else!
I don't get carded for buying beer , too old, but in the UK at least there are shops that ask for proof of age if you look under 30 let alone 18 which is the legal age for buying alcohol in the UK.
They started a few years back with 21 together with free advertising for http://www.drinkaware.co.uk/ sometimes also with http://www.think21.co.uk/ Since then various places have upped the quoted age, even though the actual law hasn't changed at all. Typically these inflated age signs are more numerous and more noticable than any which the actual law. The final irony is that both of these websites appear to break the law by not providing a postal address in their contact details.
Protecting them from what though? Sure, everyone thinks that all the law does is keep 8 year olds from being raped by creepy 40 year olds,
Though if there are 8 year olds being raped by creepy 40 year olds can't these men and women be dealt with using laws against rape?
but what it usually ends up doing is harming 19 year olds with 17 year old boyfriends/girlfriends.
As well as teenagers expressing their sexuality.
By all means, use tax dollars to find down and put in prison those who are physically or mentally harming minors
In a lot of cases this harm may not be in any way "sexual".
Is a 14 year old capable of making an informed decision? What about an 8 year old? Maybe, but as a society we've pretty much agreed that 18 is a reasonable place to set the bar.
There are places where a 14 year old is considered capable of informed decisions. In several US states 14 is the minimum age at which people can drive on the public road. If people are considered capable of making the informed decisions required to operate a dangerous machine without causing harm to bystanders are they not also capable of making all sorts of other informed decisions?
Does it not make sense that the age of consent (as well as that for age restricted legal drugs) should be no higher (and possibly lower) than the minimum driving age?
If you were going to advertise in a swingers magazine, would you care that your name and proof that you did so were to remain on file for an extended period? Do you see how somebody might mind? Might choose not to place the ad for that reason?
Is this the norm for adverts? If not then there needs to be a good case made for doing things differently for this kind of advert...
Yes, there are magical ages. What's the alternative, some government mandated maturity test before you can do certain things?
This appears to be the standard method for driving on the public roads.
The "magical age" is because it is easier to determine someone's age than it is to administer some examination to determine fit mental condition for each and every transaction in which it is meaningful.
Except that it isn't easy to determine someone's age. Be it from a photograph/video of them or even meeting them in person. That's why you end up looking at some document to try and find out someone's age. Even that isn't always especially reliable if they are trying to decieve you. Regardless of if it's a horny teenager after sex or a 50 something after a "senior citizens'" discount.
If you aren't mature enough to stay married and raise your children, then you aren't mature enough to fuck.
This isn't mature, it isn't even funny. Considering that the propaganda surrounding the whole marriage thing leads to lots of human suffering, even premature deaths.
I said nothing about loving, though that would be desirable and expected. The key thing is that you may produce children if you fuck. (even the best birth control, short of a hysterectomy, can fail)
Tubal ligations and vasectomys are the standard techniques of surgical sterilization. Some people are congenitally sterile others whilst not technically "sterile" are incapable of producing children without medical assistance. No homosexual sex has ever produced chidren. There are even plenty of things a fully fertile man and woman can do sexually which have very little likelyhood of the woman getting pregnant even without the use of any contraception.
I'd love to hear what the divorce rates are for teen marriages.
In many places divorce rates are fairly high anyway. They'd probably be a lot higher when you factor in that the action of getting divorced tends to be considerably more difficult than getting married. AFAIK divorce "on demand" dosn't exist.
You highlight the crux of a problem. Why is it not okay for teens to fuck, unless they're married, when it all becomes somehow righteous and loving and special?
Plus with the intention of having children...
Not everyone is heterosexual, not everyone is monogamous, not everyone wants children, not everyone wants "long term" relationships and so on. Human sexuality simply isn't a "one size fits all" deal.
The only thing I wanted to point out is that there isn't a silver bullet in this matter. All laws will unfairly punish somebody from time to time, and all laws will unfairly leave somebody unpunished from time to time
A really bad law can manage both at the same time. It's the job of government to ensure that either situation happens as infrequently as possible.
However in order to do this requires legislators and judiciary who can think rationally. Even when the public/media isn't...
Recently, though? I see far less debate about the morality of the issue, and far more assumption that 18 (or 16) really is a magic number.
21 is another such "magic number". Other cultures, both historical and contempoary have picked different numbers. It's difficult to tell which numbers are (or were) intended to be picked according to some rational metric and which were random.
This law, for instance, is roughly like sexual harassment laws -- there is an assumed power advantage by one party (in this case, the adult, or the boss), which raises the bar for consent. The purpose is to prevent people from being taken advantage of -- from being pressured into doing something they wouldn't ordinarily do.
Getting such a law right is not simple. There will always be people who will seek to abuse laws for their own advantage. It's also too easy for a law intended to balance a percieved power disparity to actually create one.
Yet, clearly, co-workers have sex, couples even start businesses. It might be worth looking at how sexual harassment deals with these issues.
It would also be relevent to issues between students and teachers. Especially in colleges and universities.
Now, you could claim that many people do not agree with that morality. But I am also arguing morality here -- I don't think it's moral or right to have a determination of "adult" based purely on physical age, and I especially don't think an 18-year-old deserves to be listed as a sex offender for life for having a 17-year-old girlfriend.
Or a 25 or 35 year old with a 17 year old bf/gf. There is probably more to be concerned about with a 22 teacher sleeping with his/her 18 year old student. Than a 17 with a 40 yo gf/bf her/she met through a mutual interest outside school. IMHO there would be a serious problem with a 20 year old student and a 50 year old teacher. Due to how that sexual relationship would affect the teaching and learning relationship between that teacher and all their students. Age of consent dosn't always correspond with age of legal "adulthood", either.
Regardless, it's clearly out of line with the original purpose of that law -- to protect children. Or, if you want to be technical, it's completely irrelevant to the original original purpose -- to put an end to child prostitution. If that was really the purpose, well, we already have laws against prostitution.
Or rather laws against prostitution as a commercial business activity. It can be legal (even state supported) within the likes of marriage. Though alimony and "child" support are the more PC terms which tend to be used. There are also laws controlling what sort of work children can and can't do. Though it wouldn't be too much of a suprise if some of the things children can do are more exploitative than some of the things they can't.
But, if we don't do that, we're also being hypocritical, unless we change the law. A simple change, adopted by several states, is to also add an age difference -- over 18, you can fuck anyone else over 18. Under 18, 5 years difference -- so 17 and 20 is fine, but 17 and 40 is statutory rape.
Using this kind of metric can wind up equating to the same kind of discrimination as having different hetero and homosexual ages of consent.
Even that is still pretty flawed -- is she really going to be less attracted to that 40-year-old man in a few months when she's 18? -- and there have been cases where a difference of a few days or months means the difference between a healthy relationship (among teens) and getting on the sex offender list, even with laws like that.
Or young men and women are pushed into unhealthy relationships with people younger than they'd ideally want to be with. Such laws may not even be fully effective in dealing with teachers seducing students (or vice versa).
I think we should fix the law, instead of selectively enforcing it, which seems to be what you're advocating -- or at least, enforcing it universally, but having the sentence be lessened in cases we "like".
The difficulty with even attempting to "fix the law" is that it involves accepting that "teenagers" are young men and women with the same sexuality (and variations of sexual desires) as the rest of humanity. Most parts of the world have big cultural issues with human sexuality in the first place. Be it assuming that everyone is hetero-monogamous by default or outlawing prostitution as a regular commercial business. There are also issues like if you pick an "age on consent" there will be people under than age who will activly seek sex. (A few of them if you pick something like 12, a great number of them in you pick something like 18). Further with a high age of consent not only will there be a large number of sexually active people considered by the law to be "too young" there will also be a lot of situations where both/all involved in a sex act will underage.
I did not say that there was no mental capacity restriction. For example, the 3 year old would not be in a fit mental condition to make decisions, however an advanced 13 year old would be able to, similarly a mental retarded 25 year old may not be in a fit mental condition.
There are some ways to weaken these age restrictions. Yet you may well end up with strange situations like a legally emancipated person who can marry but not have sex...
The problem in our society is the magical age of 16, 18 and 21. What would be illegal to do at 17 and 360 days suddenly becomes legal 5 to 6 days later.
There is the situation with driving which has both an age and a "test" component. However it does appear daft that people considered "too young" to be photographed nude are "old enough" to operate highly dangerous machines in public.
There are many models out there that are well above the age of consent that might raise suspicions.
There are also plenty of situations where the minimum age for a "porn model" is greater than any "age of consent".
However, if the Pirate Bay chooses this defense, the verdict might be that they have to remove torrents that break copyright on request of the copyright holder (a most likely outcome, IMHO).
If this were to happen it would also be relevent how the "copyright holder" had to prove their identity and what would happen when a bogus request was made.
If The Pirate Bay wins, the swedish laws will be changed to make sure what they've been doing would be an offence had they done it under the new law. If TPB loses, the current laws will be shown to be enough for prosecuting and convicting tracker admins.
What happens if the trial is abandoned? What is the judge finds the prosecutors in contempt of court and fines/jails them?
But this only applies to copies that are outright sold or given away;
IIRC giving something away generally is considered to be a "sale" otherwise you'd get all sorts of legal loopholes resulting from the likes of "Buy One Get One Free"...
licensing is an attempt to avoid such transfers to customers, so really the only people making things complicated are the software publishers employing EULAs.
Whilst at the same time distributing their wares in ways which look like "sales".