Maybe we ought to let people distribute those works then -- if the laws are at such odds with people's expectations of how things ought to work that we're seeing lawsuits by industry against children, it sounds as though the laws are in serious need of reform.
It's a bit like prohibition basically -- everyone at the time thought it was a good idea, but no one lived up to it, and it turned out to be mind bogglingly stupid. We were best rid of it.
Sometimes laws that are at odds with people's norms of behavior can and should be pushed through anyway. Desegregation for example. But look at how important of an issue that was. And how hard and painful it was to set things right, or at least make them better than they had been.
Copyright is not so important as to warrant that sort of effort. I think we'd be better off reducing it, and thus cases like this are useful in showing us _why_ we ought to reduce it; so that these suits are not brought in the future.
Of course you can sue a minor. And you'd have to -- parents are typically not responsible for the illegal actions of their children.
The reason it's so rare to sue children, however, is because they haven't got any money. And it's difficult to somehow pin blame on the parents (who have money and insurance policies) so it's not usually worth trying.
Crack open any torts casebook though, and there'll be a few cases involving suits against kids that typically have managed to injure someone, if only to demonstrate the pointlessness of it all.
At any rate, I think the girl here ought to go for it; the worst thing that happens is that she loses (in fact, it's almost guaranteed she'll lose), but in that case she need only declare bankruptcy, fail to pay her creditors due to her lack of assets, get a discharge of the award against her, and she can continue with her life.
Anyway, 1) dictionaries _claim_ to be copyrighted -- this is different than whether they actually _are_ copyrighted, 2) facts are uncopyrightable, but a compilation of facts, if the choice of facts compiled, their arrangement, etc. is itself independently creative (alphabetical order isn't creative, for example), may be copyrightable, though this still doesn't protect any of the facts within, 3) dictionaries have a ton of copy in which they define the word, and while it might be subject to the merger doctrine (because there's only so many ways to define the same word) it is the most likely part of the dictionary to be creative.
And you might be able to just plain copy the flyers (which could only be copyrightable in terms of the pictures, and the layout, and MAYBE the copy) if it were fair use, which should be analyzed under the 4 part fair use test of 17 USC 107.
But here most likely people are just reporting the essential information -- the prices -- out of the ads, so it is a purely fact based issue.
I'm sorry that I'm not making it easy enough for the spammers to make you happy.
It's got little to do with making me happy. The way constructive notice works, it has to be something that a reasonable spammer is likely to come across, even though they didn't.
Do you think that spammers are prone to see your web page in which you decry spam, or do you think it's more likely that they'll only ever see a list of email addresses gleaned from searches, which need to be cleaned up to remove inherent anti-spam notices? (even if they're automatically removed, this still indicates that the spammer knew there were anti-spam notices)
If I thought that spammers were out there manually finding addresses, your form of notice would be sufficient. I just doubt that it would turn out that it would be.
And if they don't correct your address -- you aren't receiving any spam, so it seems as though little harm is done.
Munging the address as you suggested would not keep the spam from reaching me. Whether they munge it, or not, it would end up in my mailbox. That may not be true for everyone, but it is true for my email. nospam.someAddress@example.com would reach me, if you swapped the domain, whether they unmunged or not.
Well, it was merely an example. You're free to add the notice to the machine part of the email address, e.g. foo@bar.no-spam.baz. Any part of the address is fine for bearing the notice.
You claim the SMTP protocol could supply notice. I don't run the server, and I don't believe spammers would care about that any more than any other method. Not to mention, since there is no standard, you would claim "Well how would they know that you've choosen to tell them that way."
A standard would have to be developed. And it doesn't matter what spammers care about, it matters what they have contact with. I'm not sufficiently well versed with the guts of SMTP, or other protocols, but I have confidence in the people that do that something can be developed. It isn't necessary that it functionally block spam, it's only necessary that it make it clear enough that spam is unwanted that the sender would know that if he were acting reasonably. (remember that _constructive_ notice means the spammer _should_ have known, had they been acting reasonably, even if they did not actually know)
And you talk about a mythical Do Not Email list which doesn't exist.
A DNC list didn't exist until quite recently. Congress could authorize the FTC to make such a list and have it up and running in a few months. Or it's possible that private interests could create such a list, though the government always has on its side the useful ability to say convincingly that their list is so damn prominent, being run by the government, that it surely gives constructive notice; spammers could never reasonably fail to be aware of it.
Now I will say that these aren't going to be effective against spam that is wholly foreign in origin. For example, I got something a few weeks ago from a cargo shipping firm in southern China.
But then, no American law, no matter how strict, is going to be of any use against a spammer outside of our borders, at least where the thing advertised also is foreign. So while it might be a problem, neither you nor I seem to have a practical solution for it.
But it's my fault.
Well, you did say that I hadn't proposed anything at all, when in fact that was not true.
Naturally, the option A you mention doesn't exist. You've already claimed that it's unreasonable of me to post "Don't spam me" on the web page where they harvest my address, and you've suggested no place at all where I could "put up proper notice". Since I haven't complied with your option A in a maner you find suitable (and note that you seem to have no place where you would consider it suitable) you claim I'm enamored with improper notice.
I have suggested two places just a few posts ago.
1) Within the email address as listed on a web site itself (e.g. foo.no-spam@bar.baz) particularly since the removal of the no spam statement as would be necessary to email people indicates that the spammer is aware of it being there and is actually informed or should be and is simply trying to be willfully ignorant of it)
2) Within the mail protocols. I'd need someone more familiar with them than I am to determine where, precisely, but if a mail server can inform a sender before it accepts mail that spam isn't accepted, that would seem to me to be okay.
And there's option 3) which is a Do Not Spam list, much like the DNC list.
You have, however, ignored all of these, because you instead prefer to post notice that while human-readable, is not really sufficiently machine readable that a spammer seems likely to ever come near it.
You believe it's OK for them to harvest my email address from my website, but that posting "I don't want your spam" on that same website isn't sufficient notice.
I think that the problem is that while spammers might properly be imputed to be aware of email addresses, given that that's what they're searching for, they're not searching for no spam notices, which themselves could be in a variety of forms, and aren't being read by human beings.
If the no spam notice were in the email address itself, then it's more likely to be noticed, if only because someone has to be removing them in order for the address to work.
Something like a DNC list for spam would of course probably be best since by virtue of being run by the government and being at a single, well-known location, it's more reasonable for spammers to have to be aware of it.
Or of course, we could put notices in the mail protocols.
Basically, consider the practical problems with doing this elsewise -- what if people said on their web pages that they didn't want Google cacheing copies of the pages? Because Google spiders automatically, that notice isn't sufficient to be reasonably likely to come to Google's attention. Their spider, after all, isn't a human being.
Send a DMCA takedown notice to them however, and that is reasonable. Or have something in a robots file, which is akin to notice in the mail protocols.
Like I said -- for notice to work, spammers must either actually be aware of it, or must be reasonably expected to know of it (i.e. they should know). You seem to me to want even unreasonable notice to work -- but of course, it can't; that would be unreasonable.
I'm supposed to beg them to stop, over and over.
No. You're supposed to either a) TELL them to stop, once, by putting up proper notice (which you seem to not want to do, being enamored with improper notice), or b) TELL them to stop once each, by informing them specifically.
I absolutely do not think that you should have to tell spammers to stop more than once, and in fact that you should be able to tell all spammers in the world to stop, with only a single proper notice given one time only.
However, it becomes clear to me that you don't want to have to argue against my position -- you keep putting words in my mouth and arguing against those. It would be refreshing, at least, if you'd actually debate me instead of debating your own imagination.
You'll have to troll someone else.
No, I'm not trolling. I earnestly believe this, I'm looking for real discussion about it, and I'm not trying to just start up a flame war. Much as I don't like spam, I don't think that it's legal to completely ban spam, and I'm seriously concerned with how little respect there is for free speech with regards to this issue.
Do you really think that it's impossible for someone to honestly argue along the lines I've been going, or to be worried about what anti-spam proposals might lead to?
You've explained quite clearly that you think the rest of us should have to put up with spam until we beg the spammers to stop. Each spammer, individually. That's the current situation, and it's what you want.
I'm afraid that you don't understand my position. Probably I haven't explained it clearly enough.
I think that: 1) No one should ever have to put up with commercial spam that is fraudulent, deceptive, or which pertains to illegal activity. If you get one of these, REGARDLESS of whether you've provided notice to the spammer, you ought to be able to sue him.
2) No one should ever have to put up with commercial spam that they have received AFTER they have either specifically informed the spammer at issue to stop OR have provided some sort of general notice that spammers are reasonably likely be to aware of in advance telling them not to spam ever. An analogue of this would the DNC list -- it informs the world in advance instead of one spammer at a time, after the fact. If you get spam contrary to proper notice, you should be able to sue the spammer (though I would advise leniency in the case of honest, ocassional mistakes, in the recognition that no one is perfect -- patterns of 'mistakes' wouldn't be tolerable, however)
This means that no one will ever have to put up with commercial spam if they don't want to, since all they have to do is provide ONE global notice to the world. The notice has to be reasonably likely to be visible to spammers (a sign on your front door would be notice, but not proper as spammers wouldn't see it) but I really don't think this is that difficult a problem.
And of course, even if you never provide notice, speech that isn't protected at all under Central Hudson can be regulated. Thus if someone sends you a spam that's a pyramid scheme or something, I think that you shouldn't have to bother opting out before sueing them.
Since particularized opt out must be honored (and if suggested by the spammer must not be fraudulent or deceptive), a person who doesn't want to provide constructive notice to everyone could, if they _chose_, opt out of each spam individually. If that's not honored, sue them.
Does this relate my position to you somewhat more clearly? Above all else please note that I am NOT SAYING, and I have NEVER SAID, that people should only have the ability to opt-out one spam at a time, or that spammers ought to get away without honoring the opt-out.
Global opt-out that must be honored on pain of lawsuit is part of my 'platform' as it were.
No, I think they love money enough that as long as they get paid well, they'll do anything to get it. Including helping a murderer or rapist go free to do it again.
Clearly you've never seen how much money public defenders make. Seriously, there are lawyers motivated by things other than money -- civil rights lawyers in particular tend to focus on ideals. And anyway, if lawyers were that interested in money, they'd be managing mutual funds or something; there are plenty of professions that pay better and are easier than law.
However, having the right to say something, and having the right to force a million people to listen to it, with them funding the bill, isn't related to free speech.
If I mail you a letter by snail mail, can I _possibly_ force you to read it? Or are you perfectly capable of throwing it away unread?
If the latter, I have to wonder what crappy-ass email program you're using that doesn't allow you to throw away spam without having read it. Is it Outlook?
The 'force people to listen' card is simply not true. You're obviously drawing upon Rowan, and that's fine. But I think you're misreading Rowan, insofar as it rejects the notion that government should decide what may and mayn't be communicated, and instead requires affirmative acts of unreceptive recipients.
How about a "I Hate Spam" page on your home page? Does that count as saying "I don't want it"? How about complaining about spammers for years? What the fuck does it take to say "Leave Me The Fuck Alone!".
Well, constructive notice should be something that spammers either a) are actually aware of, or b) can reasonably be expected to be aware of, even if they haven't actually seen it. To draw an analogy, think of 'no trespassing' signs. If you have signs every 20 feet along the edges of your property, and they're prominently displayed, it's reasonable to expect trespassers to see them. They might have deliberately not looked, but that shouldn't save them in that situation. However, if you only had one such sign, in your front yard, someone who having never seen it might have a better defense with regard to your back yard since there's simply no chance of them being able to see it from back there.
If we're talking about spammers, I don't see why people who use a lot of email would also do a lot of reading of web sites. They do apparently do searches of web sites, but that's not the same as reading them, and a search for an email address is unlikely to pick up on the addressee's feelings regarding spam, unless they're part of the address. (not necessarily a real part of the address -- foo.no-spam@bar.baz is more likely fine, even though the notice isn't really part of the address)
So I'd say that the two good places for constructive notice are 1) in email addresses, since spammers searching for addresses are likely to see them there, and 2) in mail protocols, since spammers are utilizing them.
The problem about complaining about them elsewhere is that spammers aren't reasonably likely to see those complaints. Imagine, if you will, someone who has a lot of door to door solicitors. He might close the door in their faces, but he never actually tells them to not come back or to not even bother coming to his door in the first place. If his complaints and desire for the solicitors to stop are only communicated to, say, his friends, family, or co-workers, how could we reasonably expect the solicitors themselves to know this? They're not psychic.
I've already told them thousands of times, and they keep getting worse, and you keep defending them.
Well, if you've provided constructive notice, I don't believe you should be getting any spam, save for _at most_ a trickle caused simply due to some disagreement over what spam encompasses. (i.e. political spammers might argue that spam refers only to commercial spam, thus they're not included in a notice that literally reads 'no spam,' but this should be a really minimal amount that can be cured with actual notice, or adjusting the constructive notice)
Anyway, outside of concerns for the dangers that a seriously consent-oriented society might pose towards freedom of speech generally -- a danger that hasn't materialized yet, and may not be likely to, I see no reason why you shouldn't be able to take action against spammers provided that you've provided proper constructive or actual notice.
If you've told them (which sounds like actual notice) and the same spammers have spammed you again, I'm not defending them. Remember -- part of being in the class of 'honest spammers' that are the only people I'm trying to defend is that they absolutely honor proper notice. You should not have to tell them twice.
Your way, where the marketers get to do whatever they want, is the only way that we've tried.
Actually, we haven't really tried my way either. My way is that 1) there's a cause of action against spammers that aren't protected within Central Hudson to begin with, and that a reasonable damage award is available for individual litigants, 2) there's a cause of a action against protected spammers that can be shown to have violated proper actual or constructive notice that spam shouldn't be sent.
I'm willing to experiment with this second cause of action applying to spam that is non-commerc
Opting out over and over and over and over again. Good plan, hoping each time that they'll honor the opt out. Good plan.
Well, bear in mind that I don't have problems with having teeth behind opt out. Nor do I have a problem with constructive notice, such as the DNC List. If they _don't_ honor an opt out, which would include failing to honor an earlier one, go ahead and have a good cause of action against them.
But it's better that the recipient can decide for himself that he does or does not want spam than for the government to paternalistically decide that no one can have spam, even if some people (as apparently happens) really did want to receive it.
No, I'm trying to save email as a useful medium.
Sadly, you're failing then. If unsolicited emails are disallowed, people will be unable to email you ever -- unless you've prearranged to allow email through some other medium. That is, your proposal essentially requires people to phone you or send you snail mail, or visit you in person, just to get permission to be able to email you. Regardless of the nature of the mail, since you said that the issue is purely one of consent. Communications that come in from out of the blue won't be tolerated -- and for what, because you're annoyed? Thus, a consent-centric position strikes me as absurd. It certainly makes email far less useful than it is now, even given the current problem with dishonest spam.
If this is incorrect, maybe you should clarify your position on unsolicited mail -- whether it's commercial or non-commercial in nature. Remember that there can be non-commercial solicitations, e.g. of charitable, political, or personal natures and they're not commercial speech, and not at all as easy to regulate.
My only complaint is that the market isn't big enough -- you can often walk through it in 15 minutes, and you're done. I know the market is probably limited to the area between Adams, Park and Monroe though, so this may be a space constraint more than anything.
She's also the one responsible for angle parking on Monroe in that area -- when it was all parallel, it was utter hell to get in and out. Now it's a little better, at least.
Anyway, yeah -- they won't let her close off Monroe so that people could cross easily in that direction. And apparently the same goes for Adams. It's quieter at least though. The city still gives her grief about it at times, not liking their (largely unvisited) parks to get used, since it requires more maintenance. Meanwhile, some of the stuff the city's done on it's own has been laughable. Gailee Alley instantly springs to mind.
Anyway, at the moment there's something of a push to get some residential space available downtown. This will help things immensely, since it'll get more people in that area when it would otherwise be empty. They'll -- hopefully -- patronize the local businesses, making downtown more viable for retail. Of course, there'll never be any helping the area immediately south of the Capitol, since it's all government buildings and no one has any reason to walk around over there and do stuff.
I'll pass the compliment along. Feel free to talk with her the next time you're over there -- her name is Susan and she typically wears a large straw hat. Pretty much everyone down there knows her.
One such example is the crosswalk near the parking garage on Woodward Ave. here at FSU -- they closed down most of Woodward in order to reduce traffic at that crosswalk, but because tens of thousands of cars still drive in and out of the Woodward Ave. parking garage each day, the problem is nearly as bad as before.
Yeah, I was surprised to see how much of that was shut down -- but because the natural path for people is to go from the bookstore entrance (and the path along that side of the garage) across to the union, they're still waiting to cross.
I am reminded of the lesson of the college (I forget which one) that didn't put down sidewalks in the quads for a couple of years. They wanted the students to wear paths in the ground so that they'd know where to put sidewalks so that they'd actually be used.
If more city planners observed people living in and interacting with cities, instead of having idealistic visions of how they want to fundementally change cities. (Le Corbusier is a good example of a bad planner -- superblock housing projects were supposed to be wonderful, with lots of surrounding parks and no retail since zoning should strictly segregate functions -- turns out they're hellholes with lots of wasted park space that no one uses, too big providing no interesting or diverting differentiation, and no retail which would make living there, walking around and exploring convenient; and when there's not people out and around, you often get crime)
Tallahassee gets 77% more rain each year than Seattle, on average (I used wunderground.com to look this up). I'm glad Tallahassee doesn't have bridges, otherwise people would be jumping off of them.:^)
Well, you could always jump off the Capital Circle / Thomasville Rd. overpass (which is quite FUBARed as it was premised on the idea that there'd be a lot of southbound traffic, but cannot handle reciprocal northbound traffic _at all_), or jump off of Apalachee Parkway where it goes over Franklin St., which isn't so much of a drop, but if you timed it right could result in your drowning.;)
So why do you think that west coast people suck?
I guess I never really found people out there to be very sincere; I'd rather people were sincere jerks or didn't care rather than if they tended to be pretty nice, but didn't really seem to mean it.
I'm also unsure about your statement about organic vs. planning in cities... If S.F. has improved its livability because its changes aren't so organic anymore, why do you say that the more planning that goes into cities, the more it dies? Perhaps I'm not interpreting right...
Well, I strongly suggest that you read Jane Jacobs' book "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" or something like that. It was written mostly based on her experiences in NYC in the 60's working against infamous city planner Robert Moses who had a penchant for building big roads and housing projects and destroying neighborhoods.
The gist of it is that planners tend to not observe how people actually live in successful and unsuccessful cities, don't understand what the differences between them are and how the latter can be made into the former, but instead make changes based on unrealistic but appealing-sounding ideas of how cities _ought_ to work, regardless of whether or not that's how they really do work. In a number of cases, the planners tend to not even like cities, and would prefer suburbs, which themselves are not really all that livable.
Incidentally, now I should plug the farmer's market downtown at Park and Monroe on Saturday mornings, which my Mom runs. It's essentially intended to be a way of getting people to spend more time in the area, which is essential: an area that has people in it only, say, during working hours will be dead outside of those hours, and will be unable to sustain anything that cannot survive with such an overall small audience. If you bring different people in at different times -- people who live there, people who go there to do things, people who work there, etc. the area will be enjoy more vitality, and this can ultimately result in a positive feedback loop, or at least self-sustinance.
But really -- read the book, it's very good, and you might want to look at some of the examples of city projects that were going on at the time to see what it was a reaction against. In fact, bringing us back to Boston, the total destruction of the West End for highways and MGH was a real calamity, the Central Artery (the elevated highway) cut the core of the city in half, and Scollay Sq. was razed for the useless brick plaza at Government Center. The Big Dig, which moves the highways underground, is intended to try to rectify some of these big mistakes.
As for Boston, I used to live there, I don't live there now, but I desperately want to get back there within the next couple of years at the latest, whereupon I plan to never leave again.
During the dot com era, I got a good job with a startup in Seattle running their design department. I didn't really want to move, but it was part and parcel with the job, so I ultimately did.
Having lived out there, I can definately say that the weather is great. Reports of it being crappy in the Pacific Northwest are grossly overstated. The summer is the dry season, and the winter is the rainy season, but the rain consists of fog and drizzle -- in terms of inches of rain, Tallahassee likely gets more, particularly given the summer thunderstorms that roll in from the Gulf every afternoon like clockwork. Temperatures are very mild, generally not breaking 80 in the summer or going below freezing in the winter. Snow is nearly unknown -- and I've seen it snow in Tallahasse on more that one ocassion, you know.
Further south though, the weather wouldn't be so good -- I had enough of hot weather in Tallahassee. (though note that I've seen outdoor palm trees living and planted in the ground as far north as Vancouver; my parents' palms barely manage to survive each winter)
The problems were 1) there is terrible urban sprawl. I don't know if you've been to Miami, but it has the same problem. Cities IMO shouldn't get _too_ big, at least not without having many small neighborhoods each having a very distinctive character. Boston just isn't that large. New York City is very large, but it doesn't have the problem AFAIK of every block seeming to be just like every other block, and the city having no character.
I think that a lot of this has to do with the age of the city. San Francisco is the only particularly old West Coast city, and the whole area now stretches very far north, south, and west and is sprawly. Older cities seem to me to have only improved in terms of livability with age, perhaps because changes used to be so haphazard and organic. I kind of side with Jane Jacobs in that the more planning goes into a city, the more it dies, at least in practice.
2) People on the West Coast suck. I just don't really like them, finding East Coasters more to my liking. Bear in mind that I presently am stuck in New Jersey, and while I don't like it much, the people are fabulous. With regards to this, I'm reminded of a Callahan cartoon -- The people in LA say 'Have a nice day' to one another but are thinking 'Fuck you,' while the people in NYC say 'Fuck you' and are thinking 'Have a nice day.'
Of course, both are rather dissimilar from stereotypical southerners who will say and think 'Have a nice day' in essence, but there really aren't so many of those as there used to be. Probably TV's fault. We're losing our accents too.
I've been in Boston before, only for a short while when I was a kid though. All I can remember was the road leading into Logan Int'l -- a billion lanes, a billion cars, all moving about one billionth of a mile per hour... I hope all of Boston isn't like that!:^) Thankfully, I've heard great things otherwise.
Naw. While there have been some traffic problems resulting from the Big Dig (the project to put the downtown highways underground) generally you'll find that Boston traffic involves a few lanes, a billion cars, all moving about a billion miles an hour while bumper to bumper. I don't know why people say Boston drivers are bad -- they're actually remarkably good. And expect other people to be just as good.;)
That's funny, since I was just reading that he has done that before. _Way_ back when, Commodore was thinking about getting into the computer business, and considered just buying a small company rather than to start from scratch. They looked at Apple, which at the time only had the Apple I, and the representative and Steve came to an agreement.
Then Steve checked up on Commodore, found out that everyone came away feeling screwed, and retracted. Wouldn't've mattered anyway, as Trammiel decided he didn't like Apple. Woz at the time was not really interested in having his own company, and was pissed off with Steve for retracting the offer which would've had the two of them getting cushy jobs at Commodore (which ultimately bought MOS as well).
Steve is a weird ass businessman and not that successful at it. Mostly he gets by on the force of his personality AFAICT.
He's only ever run three companies: Apple, where he was supplanted by management put in place by VC for some time, and was ultimately kicked out. NeXT, which he retained total control over, and ran into the ground. Pixar, which he hasn't gotten personally involved with AFAIK, leaving things to others. And of course, then he came back to Apple, but while their name stays in the papers, their fortunes haven't really improved.
Personally I like Boston -- it's a big city, but it in fact is very very small. This means that the city and the dense suburbs all fit nicely within 128 (the equivalent of Capital Circle, i.e. a 'ring' highway) and beyond you get smaller suburbs, little towns, farms, etc. Plenty of industry, culture, excellent mass transit via subway and light rail. Dunno about crime, but I haven't ever had any real trouble. Give it a look.
Also I wouldn't call Tallahassee a city. You know why they put it there right? Because St. Augustine and Pensacola were fighting over which should be the capital, and so they settled on a spot literally halfway between them. Stupid bastards -- they should've put it at St. Marks or better yet, Apalachicola.
It doesn't matter if the spam is for an actual, otherwise legitmate company, it's still spam.
The reason why this matters is that legitimate companies will obey opt outs and constructive notice more or less under Rowan. This permits individuals to decide for themselves whether or not they want to receive spam, as opposed to having you decide for them. Particularly where legitimate businesses are concerned, there's a greater chance that the spam _is_ wanted, you know, or at least, so I'm told. In my case I personally agree that no spam is good spam.
It doesn't solve the problem, it just brings up questions similar to those the DNC list has - some calls are allowed, others aren't.
That's not going to work. You are in essence proposing that an anti-spam law extend to all unwanted email, regardless of whether it's commercial or solicitious in nature. Political spam would be MUCH harder to regulate than commercial spam -- and let's not even get into the fact that you would seek to punish people for sending unsolicited personal emails to people they knew if they didn't already have consent from the recipient.
What you seek is the destruction of email, basically, or at least the destruction of convenient email, since no one dare ever send a message without getting permission through some other means of communication in the first place (which itself is likely just as if not more bothersome and also likely subject to similar regulation). Really I imagine you don't like anyone ever initiating communication, since you're striving to stamp it out.
Studies show that spam is costing businesses (not counting the costs to individuals) somewhere in the 10 Billion a year range, and you claim there is no cost shifting. That's why it's hard to have a reasonable discussion with you - facts have no bearing on what you believe.
Are those studies limited to ONLY legitimate spam, or are they inclusive of ALL spam? The latter are improperly conducted studies for justifying regulation per Central Hudson. And I'd be impressed if anyone's done a study of the former, accounted for the fact that opt out and notice would work, and still came up with a result that was even vaguely large.
This is just like before -- I'm saying that SOME spam is protected, therefore the only proper rebuttal you could make would be that SOME spam -- the SAME SOME spam -- is seriously problematic. It doesn't matter if all spam is problematic, since that's not what I'm saying is protected.
Bolger v Youngs Drugs which has nothing to do with cost shifting
Bolger says that recipients are going to have to tolerate some burden for the First Amendment to mean anything; this burden, I believe, includes bearing the costs shifted on to them, at least to some degree. There, sorting through and disposing of junk mail consumes resources. Sorting through and disposing of spam is not particularly difficult, especially given the benefit of filters, and the costs are similar.
Whoops. I made a small error in the above post. Where I said: Thus, if you cannot prove that ALL possible solutions less extensive than a blanket ban would have worked just as well -- you lose, that should read: Thus, if you cannot prove that ALL possible solutions less extensive than a blanket ban would not have worked just as well -- you lose.
That is, the regulation sought to be imposed must be the most minimal intrustion by the government possible; if it could have intruded less and still done what it was trying to do, the law is unconstitutional for failing to be sufficiently narrow.
But you continue to claim that spam can't be outlawed because Central Hudson protects it.
Spam generally, yes.
Spam that is fraudulent, deceptive, or which concerns illegal activities, or which is sent by spammers who do not respect and adhere to actual or constructive 'no spam' notices, no.
Thus, I'm only willing to go so far as to defend essentially the least offensive spammers -- the ones that are not trying to scam you, who obey the law, and who will go away if you tell them to or warn them off in advance. I don't think that this class of spammers presents a threat. But it is the ONLY class of spammers that would be affected by a blanket anti-spam law, since we already HAVE laws which can deal with the rest of the spammers.
You continue to ignore the cost shifting.
No, I just don't believe that there is any substantial cost shifting occuring -- at least not by the class of spammers that I'm defending here.
Remember, to a certain extent, cost shifting is NOT sufficient grounds for regulation:
Recipients of objectionable mailings, however, may "'effectively avoid further bombardment of their sensibilities simply by averting their eyes.'" Consequently, the "short, though regular, journey from mail box to trash can . . . is an acceptable burden, at least so far as the Constitution is concerned."
Bolger v. Youngs Drug Products, 463 US 60, 73 (1983)
Spam, I suspect, is no more burdensome than junk mail.
Challenges to the unsolicited fax laws have shown that cost shifted advertising isn't protected.
Actually, they have not. There haven't been many junk fax cases, and some have gone that way, and others have held the junk fax statute unconstitutional.
You've continued to ignore the fact that Central Hudson clearly explains that the government *does* have a right to regulate advertising when there is a compelling public interest.
To determine whether or not an antispam law would be constitutional you have to proceed through the following analysis:
Is the speech sought to be regulated commercial speech?
Commerical speech is speech which does no more than propose a commercial transaction.
Advertising is presumed to be commercial speech, but all presumptions can be rebutted.
If it is commercial speech, then proceed with the Central Hudson test, which is an intermediate form of scrutiny; neither the strictest, nor the least strict.
The person seeking to enforce regulation on the speech bears the burden of proving that the speech can be regulated in the present instance. If he cannot affirmatively prove this, and mere assertions are not enough, the regulator loses.
The Central Hudson test: If the speech is not misleading, deceptive, nor pertains to unlawful activity, the speech is protected by the First Amendment.
This means that spam that is misleading or deceptive or pertains to unlawful activities is not protected -- and I haven't been defending it, so it's a good thing that I understand the standards, huh?
On the other hand, it means that the ONLY speech we're interested in when we proceed any further in this analysis is so-called 'honest spam,' i.e. spam that is not misleading, is not deceptive, and which does not pertain to illegal activity. Offhand I suspect that 99.44% of spam is NOT of this type.
If the speech is protected by the First Amendment per Central Hudson, it may nevertheless still be subject to some regulation. HOWEVER, the party seeking to impose regulation still has the burden of proving ALL of the following:
There is a substantial government interest in regulating the protected speech, i.e. that there is a serious problem that is affirmatively proven REAL, and not merely supported by speculation or conjecture. The potential for a problem is not sufficient either. What's needed, really, are
I never said that any business can say anything it wants and advertise in any way it wants. I said that commercial speech is protected under the First Amendment.
These are not precisely the same thing, and my comments are chiefly intended to tear down the mistaken belief that shows up here again and again that commercial speech is wholly unprotected by the First Amendment.
I have REPEATEDLY pointed out that there is no protection afforded for fraudulent or deceptive commercial speech, nor commercial speech relating to illegal activities.
Central Hudson came about because of a *complete ban on any form of advertising, via any media, by electric companies*.
This is irrelevant. If the Supreme Court wanted to limit their decision to such a small set of circumstances, they were ENTIRELY able to do so. They did not, and in the nearly quarter-century since Central Hudson, they have never narrowed that holding in that way. Even where there is a limited ban on advertising, Central Hudson applies.
Central Hudson also specifically states that commercial speech is entitled to less protection than other forms of speech.
That's true. Of course, IIRC, this is due to the recognition that commercial speech is difficult to chill, not because the speakers are inherently bad or something.
But there _IS_ protection. Most people around here seem to not think that there is any. They are wrong.
I, OTOH, have never said that Central Hudson provided absolute protection. That would clearly be incompatable with the many posts I've been making over a long span of time indicating that I feel it is perfectly legal to, e.g. ban fraudulent or deceptive spam, or to ban spam sent despite actual or constructive notice by the recipient to not send spam. (as opposed to a blanket ban on spam that would violate Central Hudson)
It isn't a "We can do everything" talisman as you so often suggest.
I've never suggested that. Please show me a quote, in context, where you think that I have. If you can find one, I'll be impressed.
I would happily take SCO's money to not use Linux, especially given as how this fits in so nicely with my current plans to avoid Linux (and anything else even slightly Unixy) like the plague.
But with my luck they probably only pay in SCOland Fun Bucks or something.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe we ought to let people distribute those works then -- if the laws are at such odds with people's expectations of how things ought to work that we're seeing lawsuits by industry against children, it sounds as though the laws are in serious need of reform.
It's a bit like prohibition basically -- everyone at the time thought it was a good idea, but no one lived up to it, and it turned out to be mind bogglingly stupid. We were best rid of it.
Sometimes laws that are at odds with people's norms of behavior can and should be pushed through anyway. Desegregation for example. But look at how important of an issue that was. And how hard and painful it was to set things right, or at least make them better than they had been.
Copyright is not so important as to warrant that sort of effort. I think we'd be better off reducing it, and thus cases like this are useful in showing us _why_ we ought to reduce it; so that these suits are not brought in the future.
What the hell are you talking about?
Of course you can sue a minor. And you'd have to -- parents are typically not responsible for the illegal actions of their children.
The reason it's so rare to sue children, however, is because they haven't got any money. And it's difficult to somehow pin blame on the parents (who have money and insurance policies) so it's not usually worth trying.
Crack open any torts casebook though, and there'll be a few cases involving suits against kids that typically have managed to injure someone, if only to demonstrate the pointlessness of it all.
At any rate, I think the girl here ought to go for it; the worst thing that happens is that she loses (in fact, it's almost guaranteed she'll lose), but in that case she need only declare bankruptcy, fail to pay her creditors due to her lack of assets, get a discharge of the award against her, and she can continue with her life.
I don't respect a term if it's 250 years old just because it's a 250 year old dysphemism
What if it's 330 years old? (man do I love the OED)
What's the M stand for?
Anyway, 1) dictionaries _claim_ to be copyrighted -- this is different than whether they actually _are_ copyrighted, 2) facts are uncopyrightable, but a compilation of facts, if the choice of facts compiled, their arrangement, etc. is itself independently creative (alphabetical order isn't creative, for example), may be copyrightable, though this still doesn't protect any of the facts within, 3) dictionaries have a ton of copy in which they define the word, and while it might be subject to the merger doctrine (because there's only so many ways to define the same word) it is the most likely part of the dictionary to be creative.
And you might be able to just plain copy the flyers (which could only be copyrightable in terms of the pictures, and the layout, and MAYBE the copy) if it were fair use, which should be analyzed under the 4 part fair use test of 17 USC 107.
But here most likely people are just reporting the essential information -- the prices -- out of the ads, so it is a purely fact based issue.
I'm sorry that I'm not making it easy enough for the spammers to make you happy.
It's got little to do with making me happy. The way constructive notice works, it has to be something that a reasonable spammer is likely to come across, even though they didn't.
Do you think that spammers are prone to see your web page in which you decry spam, or do you think it's more likely that they'll only ever see a list of email addresses gleaned from searches, which need to be cleaned up to remove inherent anti-spam notices? (even if they're automatically removed, this still indicates that the spammer knew there were anti-spam notices)
If I thought that spammers were out there manually finding addresses, your form of notice would be sufficient. I just doubt that it would turn out that it would be.
And if they don't correct your address -- you aren't receiving any spam, so it seems as though little harm is done.
Munging the address as you suggested would not keep the spam from reaching me. Whether they munge it, or not, it would end up in my mailbox. That may not be true for everyone, but it is true for my email. nospam.someAddress@example.com would reach me, if you swapped the domain, whether they unmunged or not.
Well, it was merely an example. You're free to add the notice to the machine part of the email address, e.g. foo@bar.no-spam.baz. Any part of the address is fine for bearing the notice.
You claim the SMTP protocol could supply notice. I don't run the server, and I don't believe spammers would care about that any more than any other method. Not to mention, since there is no standard, you would claim "Well how would they know that you've choosen to tell them that way."
A standard would have to be developed. And it doesn't matter what spammers care about, it matters what they have contact with. I'm not sufficiently well versed with the guts of SMTP, or other protocols, but I have confidence in the people that do that something can be developed. It isn't necessary that it functionally block spam, it's only necessary that it make it clear enough that spam is unwanted that the sender would know that if he were acting reasonably. (remember that _constructive_ notice means the spammer _should_ have known, had they been acting reasonably, even if they did not actually know)
And you talk about a mythical Do Not Email list which doesn't exist.
A DNC list didn't exist until quite recently. Congress could authorize the FTC to make such a list and have it up and running in a few months. Or it's possible that private interests could create such a list, though the government always has on its side the useful ability to say convincingly that their list is so damn prominent, being run by the government, that it surely gives constructive notice; spammers could never reasonably fail to be aware of it.
Now I will say that these aren't going to be effective against spam that is wholly foreign in origin. For example, I got something a few weeks ago from a cargo shipping firm in southern China.
But then, no American law, no matter how strict, is going to be of any use against a spammer outside of our borders, at least where the thing advertised also is foreign. So while it might be a problem, neither you nor I seem to have a practical solution for it.
But it's my fault.
Well, you did say that I hadn't proposed anything at all, when in fact that was not true.
Naturally, the option A you mention doesn't exist. You've already claimed that it's unreasonable of me to post "Don't spam me" on the web page where they harvest my address, and you've suggested no place at all where I could "put up proper notice". Since I haven't complied with your option A in a maner you find suitable (and note that you seem to have no place where you would consider it suitable) you claim I'm enamored with improper notice.
I have suggested two places just a few posts ago.
1) Within the email address as listed on a web site itself (e.g. foo.no-spam@bar.baz) particularly since the removal of the no spam statement as would be necessary to email people indicates that the spammer is aware of it being there and is actually informed or should be and is simply trying to be willfully ignorant of it)
2) Within the mail protocols. I'd need someone more familiar with them than I am to determine where, precisely, but if a mail server can inform a sender before it accepts mail that spam isn't accepted, that would seem to me to be okay.
And there's option 3) which is a Do Not Spam list, much like the DNC list.
You have, however, ignored all of these, because you instead prefer to post notice that while human-readable, is not really sufficiently machine readable that a spammer seems likely to ever come near it.
You believe it's OK for them to harvest my email address from my website, but that posting "I don't want your spam" on that same website isn't sufficient notice.
I think that the problem is that while spammers might properly be imputed to be aware of email addresses, given that that's what they're searching for, they're not searching for no spam notices, which themselves could be in a variety of forms, and aren't being read by human beings.
If the no spam notice were in the email address itself, then it's more likely to be noticed, if only because someone has to be removing them in order for the address to work.
Something like a DNC list for spam would of course probably be best since by virtue of being run by the government and being at a single, well-known location, it's more reasonable for spammers to have to be aware of it.
Or of course, we could put notices in the mail protocols.
Basically, consider the practical problems with doing this elsewise -- what if people said on their web pages that they didn't want Google cacheing copies of the pages? Because Google spiders automatically, that notice isn't sufficient to be reasonably likely to come to Google's attention. Their spider, after all, isn't a human being.
Send a DMCA takedown notice to them however, and that is reasonable. Or have something in a robots file, which is akin to notice in the mail protocols.
Like I said -- for notice to work, spammers must either actually be aware of it, or must be reasonably expected to know of it (i.e. they should know). You seem to me to want even unreasonable notice to work -- but of course, it can't; that would be unreasonable.
I'm supposed to beg them to stop, over and over.
No. You're supposed to either a) TELL them to stop, once, by putting up proper notice (which you seem to not want to do, being enamored with improper notice), or b) TELL them to stop once each, by informing them specifically.
I absolutely do not think that you should have to tell spammers to stop more than once, and in fact that you should be able to tell all spammers in the world to stop, with only a single proper notice given one time only.
However, it becomes clear to me that you don't want to have to argue against my position -- you keep putting words in my mouth and arguing against those. It would be refreshing, at least, if you'd actually debate me instead of debating your own imagination.
You'll have to troll someone else.
No, I'm not trolling. I earnestly believe this, I'm looking for real discussion about it, and I'm not trying to just start up a flame war. Much as I don't like spam, I don't think that it's legal to completely ban spam, and I'm seriously concerned with how little respect there is for free speech with regards to this issue.
Do you really think that it's impossible for someone to honestly argue along the lines I've been going, or to be worried about what anti-spam proposals might lead to?
You've explained quite clearly that you think the rest of us should have to put up with spam until we beg the spammers to stop. Each spammer, individually. That's the current situation, and it's what you want.
I'm afraid that you don't understand my position. Probably I haven't explained it clearly enough.
I think that:
1) No one should ever have to put up with commercial spam that is fraudulent, deceptive, or which pertains to illegal activity. If you get one of these, REGARDLESS of whether you've provided notice to the spammer, you ought to be able to sue him.
2) No one should ever have to put up with commercial spam that they have received AFTER they have either specifically informed the spammer at issue to stop OR have provided some sort of general notice that spammers are reasonably likely be to aware of in advance telling them not to spam ever. An analogue of this would the DNC list -- it informs the world in advance instead of one spammer at a time, after the fact. If you get spam contrary to proper notice, you should be able to sue the spammer (though I would advise leniency in the case of honest, ocassional mistakes, in the recognition that no one is perfect -- patterns of 'mistakes' wouldn't be tolerable, however)
This means that no one will ever have to put up with commercial spam if they don't want to, since all they have to do is provide ONE global notice to the world. The notice has to be reasonably likely to be visible to spammers (a sign on your front door would be notice, but not proper as spammers wouldn't see it) but I really don't think this is that difficult a problem.
And of course, even if you never provide notice, speech that isn't protected at all under Central Hudson can be regulated. Thus if someone sends you a spam that's a pyramid scheme or something, I think that you shouldn't have to bother opting out before sueing them.
Since particularized opt out must be honored (and if suggested by the spammer must not be fraudulent or deceptive), a person who doesn't want to provide constructive notice to everyone could, if they _chose_, opt out of each spam individually. If that's not honored, sue them.
Does this relate my position to you somewhat more clearly? Above all else please note that I am NOT SAYING, and I have NEVER SAID, that people should only have the ability to opt-out one spam at a time, or that spammers ought to get away without honoring the opt-out.
Global opt-out that must be honored on pain of lawsuit is part of my 'platform' as it were.
No, I think they love money enough that as long as they get paid well, they'll do anything to get it. Including helping a murderer or rapist go free to do it again.
Clearly you've never seen how much money public defenders make. Seriously, there are lawyers motivated by things other than money -- civil rights lawyers in particular tend to focus on ideals. And anyway, if lawyers were that interested in money, they'd be managing mutual funds or something; there are plenty of professions that pay better and are easier than law.
However, having the right to say something, and having the right to force a million people to listen to it, with them funding the bill, isn't related to free speech.
If I mail you a letter by snail mail, can I _possibly_ force you to read it? Or are you perfectly capable of throwing it away unread?
If the latter, I have to wonder what crappy-ass email program you're using that doesn't allow you to throw away spam without having read it. Is it Outlook?
The 'force people to listen' card is simply not true. You're obviously drawing upon Rowan, and that's fine. But I think you're misreading Rowan, insofar as it rejects the notion that government should decide what may and mayn't be communicated, and instead requires affirmative acts of unreceptive recipients.
How about a "I Hate Spam" page on your home page? Does that count as saying "I don't want it"? How about complaining about spammers for years? What the fuck does it take to say "Leave Me The Fuck Alone!".
Well, constructive notice should be something that spammers either a) are actually aware of, or b) can reasonably be expected to be aware of, even if they haven't actually seen it. To draw an analogy, think of 'no trespassing' signs. If you have signs every 20 feet along the edges of your property, and they're prominently displayed, it's reasonable to expect trespassers to see them. They might have deliberately not looked, but that shouldn't save them in that situation. However, if you only had one such sign, in your front yard, someone who having never seen it might have a better defense with regard to your back yard since there's simply no chance of them being able to see it from back there.
If we're talking about spammers, I don't see why people who use a lot of email would also do a lot of reading of web sites. They do apparently do searches of web sites, but that's not the same as reading them, and a search for an email address is unlikely to pick up on the addressee's feelings regarding spam, unless they're part of the address. (not necessarily a real part of the address -- foo.no-spam@bar.baz is more likely fine, even though the notice isn't really part of the address)
So I'd say that the two good places for constructive notice are 1) in email addresses, since spammers searching for addresses are likely to see them there, and 2) in mail protocols, since spammers are utilizing them.
The problem about complaining about them elsewhere is that spammers aren't reasonably likely to see those complaints. Imagine, if you will, someone who has a lot of door to door solicitors. He might close the door in their faces, but he never actually tells them to not come back or to not even bother coming to his door in the first place. If his complaints and desire for the solicitors to stop are only communicated to, say, his friends, family, or co-workers, how could we reasonably expect the solicitors themselves to know this? They're not psychic.
I've already told them thousands of times, and they keep getting worse, and you keep defending them.
Well, if you've provided constructive notice, I don't believe you should be getting any spam, save for _at most_ a trickle caused simply due to some disagreement over what spam encompasses. (i.e. political spammers might argue that spam refers only to commercial spam, thus they're not included in a notice that literally reads 'no spam,' but this should be a really minimal amount that can be cured with actual notice, or adjusting the constructive notice)
Anyway, outside of concerns for the dangers that a seriously consent-oriented society might pose towards freedom of speech generally -- a danger that hasn't materialized yet, and may not be likely to, I see no reason why you shouldn't be able to take action against spammers provided that you've provided proper constructive or actual notice.
If you've told them (which sounds like actual notice) and the same spammers have spammed you again, I'm not defending them. Remember -- part of being in the class of 'honest spammers' that are the only people I'm trying to defend is that they absolutely honor proper notice. You should not have to tell them twice.
Your way, where the marketers get to do whatever they want, is the only way that we've tried.
Actually, we haven't really tried my way either. My way is that 1) there's a cause of action against spammers that aren't protected within Central Hudson to begin with, and that a reasonable damage award is available for individual litigants, 2) there's a cause of a action against protected spammers that can be shown to have violated proper actual or constructive notice that spam shouldn't be sent.
I'm willing to experiment with this second cause of action applying to spam that is non-commerc
Opting out over and over and over and over again. Good plan, hoping each time that they'll honor the opt out. Good plan.
Well, bear in mind that I don't have problems with having teeth behind opt out. Nor do I have a problem with constructive notice, such as the DNC List. If they _don't_ honor an opt out, which would include failing to honor an earlier one, go ahead and have a good cause of action against them.
But it's better that the recipient can decide for himself that he does or does not want spam than for the government to paternalistically decide that no one can have spam, even if some people (as apparently happens) really did want to receive it.
No, I'm trying to save email as a useful medium.
Sadly, you're failing then. If unsolicited emails are disallowed, people will be unable to email you ever -- unless you've prearranged to allow email through some other medium. That is, your proposal essentially requires people to phone you or send you snail mail, or visit you in person, just to get permission to be able to email you. Regardless of the nature of the mail, since you said that the issue is purely one of consent. Communications that come in from out of the blue won't be tolerated -- and for what, because you're annoyed? Thus, a consent-centric position strikes me as absurd. It certainly makes email far less useful than it is now, even given the current problem with dishonest spam.
If this is incorrect, maybe you should clarify your position on unsolicited mail -- whether it's commercial or non-commercial in nature. Remember that there can be non-commercial solicitations, e.g. of charitable, political, or personal natures and they're not commercial speech, and not at all as easy to regulate.
...So I'll do it.
Ahem.
My dog has no nose.
My only complaint is that the market isn't big enough -- you can often walk through it in 15 minutes, and you're done. I know the market is probably limited to the area between Adams, Park and Monroe though, so this may be a space constraint more than anything.
She's also the one responsible for angle parking on Monroe in that area -- when it was all parallel, it was utter hell to get in and out. Now it's a little better, at least.
Anyway, yeah -- they won't let her close off Monroe so that people could cross easily in that direction. And apparently the same goes for Adams. It's quieter at least though. The city still gives her grief about it at times, not liking their (largely unvisited) parks to get used, since it requires more maintenance. Meanwhile, some of the stuff the city's done on it's own has been laughable. Gailee Alley instantly springs to mind.
Anyway, at the moment there's something of a push to get some residential space available downtown. This will help things immensely, since it'll get more people in that area when it would otherwise be empty. They'll -- hopefully -- patronize the local businesses, making downtown more viable for retail. Of course, there'll never be any helping the area immediately south of the Capitol, since it's all government buildings and no one has any reason to walk around over there and do stuff.
I'll pass the compliment along. Feel free to talk with her the next time you're over there -- her name is Susan and she typically wears a large straw hat. Pretty much everyone down there knows her.
One such example is the crosswalk near the parking garage on Woodward Ave. here at FSU -- they closed down most of Woodward in order to reduce traffic at that crosswalk, but because tens of thousands of cars still drive in and out of the Woodward Ave. parking garage each day, the problem is nearly as bad as before.
Yeah, I was surprised to see how much of that was shut down -- but because the natural path for people is to go from the bookstore entrance (and the path along that side of the garage) across to the union, they're still waiting to cross.
I am reminded of the lesson of the college (I forget which one) that didn't put down sidewalks in the quads for a couple of years. They wanted the students to wear paths in the ground so that they'd know where to put sidewalks so that they'd actually be used.
If more city planners observed people living in and interacting with cities, instead of having idealistic visions of how they want to fundementally change cities. (Le Corbusier is a good example of a bad planner -- superblock housing projects were supposed to be wonderful, with lots of surrounding parks and no retail since zoning should strictly segregate functions -- turns out they're hellholes with lots of wasted park space that no one uses, too big providing no interesting or diverting differentiation, and no retail which would make living there, walking around and exploring convenient; and when there's not people out and around, you often get crime)
Tallahassee gets 77% more rain each year than Seattle, on average (I used wunderground.com to look this up). I'm glad Tallahassee doesn't have bridges, otherwise people would be jumping off of them. :^)
;)
Well, you could always jump off the Capital Circle / Thomasville Rd. overpass (which is quite FUBARed as it was premised on the idea that there'd be a lot of southbound traffic, but cannot handle reciprocal northbound traffic _at all_), or jump off of Apalachee Parkway where it goes over Franklin St., which isn't so much of a drop, but if you timed it right could result in your drowning.
So why do you think that west coast people suck?
I guess I never really found people out there to be very sincere; I'd rather people were sincere jerks or didn't care rather than if they tended to be pretty nice, but didn't really seem to mean it.
I'm also unsure about your statement about organic vs. planning in cities... If S.F. has improved its livability because its changes aren't so organic anymore, why do you say that the more planning that goes into cities, the more it dies? Perhaps I'm not interpreting right...
Well, I strongly suggest that you read Jane Jacobs' book "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" or something like that. It was written mostly based on her experiences in NYC in the 60's working against infamous city planner Robert Moses who had a penchant for building big roads and housing projects and destroying neighborhoods.
The gist of it is that planners tend to not observe how people actually live in successful and unsuccessful cities, don't understand what the differences between them are and how the latter can be made into the former, but instead make changes based on unrealistic but appealing-sounding ideas of how cities _ought_ to work, regardless of whether or not that's how they really do work. In a number of cases, the planners tend to not even like cities, and would prefer suburbs, which themselves are not really all that livable.
Incidentally, now I should plug the farmer's market downtown at Park and Monroe on Saturday mornings, which my Mom runs. It's essentially intended to be a way of getting people to spend more time in the area, which is essential: an area that has people in it only, say, during working hours will be dead outside of those hours, and will be unable to sustain anything that cannot survive with such an overall small audience. If you bring different people in at different times -- people who live there, people who go there to do things, people who work there, etc. the area will be enjoy more vitality, and this can ultimately result in a positive feedback loop, or at least self-sustinance.
But really -- read the book, it's very good, and you might want to look at some of the examples of city projects that were going on at the time to see what it was a reaction against. In fact, bringing us back to Boston, the total destruction of the West End for highways and MGH was a real calamity, the Central Artery (the elevated highway) cut the core of the city in half, and Scollay Sq. was razed for the useless brick plaza at Government Center. The Big Dig, which moves the highways underground, is intended to try to rectify some of these big mistakes.
I used to live in Waltham. It's a small world.
As for Boston, I used to live there, I don't live there now, but I desperately want to get back there within the next couple of years at the latest, whereupon I plan to never leave again.
During the dot com era, I got a good job with a startup in Seattle running their design department. I didn't really want to move, but it was part and parcel with the job, so I ultimately did.
Having lived out there, I can definately say that the weather is great. Reports of it being crappy in the Pacific Northwest are grossly overstated. The summer is the dry season, and the winter is the rainy season, but the rain consists of fog and drizzle -- in terms of inches of rain, Tallahassee likely gets more, particularly given the summer thunderstorms that roll in from the Gulf every afternoon like clockwork. Temperatures are very mild, generally not breaking 80 in the summer or going below freezing in the winter. Snow is nearly unknown -- and I've seen it snow in Tallahasse on more that one ocassion, you know.
Further south though, the weather wouldn't be so good -- I had enough of hot weather in Tallahassee. (though note that I've seen outdoor palm trees living and planted in the ground as far north as Vancouver; my parents' palms barely manage to survive each winter)
The problems were
1) there is terrible urban sprawl. I don't know if you've been to Miami, but it has the same problem. Cities IMO shouldn't get _too_ big, at least not without having many small neighborhoods each having a very distinctive character. Boston just isn't that large. New York City is very large, but it doesn't have the problem AFAIK of every block seeming to be just like every other block, and the city having no character.
I think that a lot of this has to do with the age of the city. San Francisco is the only particularly old West Coast city, and the whole area now stretches very far north, south, and west and is sprawly. Older cities seem to me to have only improved in terms of livability with age, perhaps because changes used to be so haphazard and organic. I kind of side with Jane Jacobs in that the more planning goes into a city, the more it dies, at least in practice.
2) People on the West Coast suck. I just don't really like them, finding East Coasters more to my liking. Bear in mind that I presently am stuck in New Jersey, and while I don't like it much, the people are fabulous. With regards to this, I'm reminded of a Callahan cartoon -- The people in LA say 'Have a nice day' to one another but are thinking 'Fuck you,' while the people in NYC say 'Fuck you' and are thinking 'Have a nice day.'
Of course, both are rather dissimilar from stereotypical southerners who will say and think 'Have a nice day' in essence, but there really aren't so many of those as there used to be. Probably TV's fault. We're losing our accents too.
I've been in Boston before, only for a short while when I was a kid though. All I can remember was the road leading into Logan Int'l -- a billion lanes, a billion cars, all moving about one billionth of a mile per hour... I hope all of Boston isn't like that! :^) Thankfully, I've heard great things otherwise.
;)
Naw. While there have been some traffic problems resulting from the Big Dig (the project to put the downtown highways underground) generally you'll find that Boston traffic involves a few lanes, a billion cars, all moving about a billion miles an hour while bumper to bumper. I don't know why people say Boston drivers are bad -- they're actually remarkably good. And expect other people to be just as good.
Thought about working for Variety?
That's funny, since I was just reading that he has done that before. _Way_ back when, Commodore was thinking about getting into the computer business, and considered just buying a small company rather than to start from scratch. They looked at Apple, which at the time only had the Apple I, and the representative and Steve came to an agreement.
Then Steve checked up on Commodore, found out that everyone came away feeling screwed, and retracted. Wouldn't've mattered anyway, as Trammiel decided he didn't like Apple. Woz at the time was not really interested in having his own company, and was pissed off with Steve for retracting the offer which would've had the two of them getting cushy jobs at Commodore (which ultimately bought MOS as well).
Steve is a weird ass businessman and not that successful at it. Mostly he gets by on the force of his personality AFAICT.
He's only ever run three companies: Apple, where he was supplanted by management put in place by VC for some time, and was ultimately kicked out. NeXT, which he retained total control over, and ran into the ground. Pixar, which he hasn't gotten personally involved with AFAIK, leaving things to others. And of course, then he came back to Apple, but while their name stays in the papers, their fortunes haven't really improved.
Personally I like Boston -- it's a big city, but it in fact is very very small. This means that the city and the dense suburbs all fit nicely within 128 (the equivalent of Capital Circle, i.e. a 'ring' highway) and beyond you get smaller suburbs, little towns, farms, etc. Plenty of industry, culture, excellent mass transit via subway and light rail. Dunno about crime, but I haven't ever had any real trouble. Give it a look.
Also I wouldn't call Tallahassee a city. You know why they put it there right? Because St. Augustine and Pensacola were fighting over which should be the capital, and so they settled on a spot literally halfway between them. Stupid bastards -- they should've put it at St. Marks or better yet, Apalachicola.
Well we'd know -- you're at FSU, and I grew up in Tallahassee, and there's loads of nice beaches along the panhandle.
(OTOH, I also left FL as soon as I could for the Northeast -- I prefer city life to beaches)
What the hell? There already _is_ a third coast. The Gulf Coast -- from Texas to Florida.
It doesn't matter if the spam is for an actual, otherwise legitmate company, it's still spam.
The reason why this matters is that legitimate companies will obey opt outs and constructive notice more or less under Rowan. This permits individuals to decide for themselves whether or not they want to receive spam, as opposed to having you decide for them. Particularly where legitimate businesses are concerned, there's a greater chance that the spam _is_ wanted, you know, or at least, so I'm told. In my case I personally agree that no spam is good spam.
It doesn't solve the problem, it just brings up questions similar to those the DNC list has - some calls are allowed, others aren't.
That's not going to work. You are in essence proposing that an anti-spam law extend to all unwanted email, regardless of whether it's commercial or solicitious in nature. Political spam would be MUCH harder to regulate than commercial spam -- and let's not even get into the fact that you would seek to punish people for sending unsolicited personal emails to people they knew if they didn't already have consent from the recipient.
What you seek is the destruction of email, basically, or at least the destruction of convenient email, since no one dare ever send a message without getting permission through some other means of communication in the first place (which itself is likely just as if not more bothersome and also likely subject to similar regulation). Really I imagine you don't like anyone ever initiating communication, since you're striving to stamp it out.
Studies show that spam is costing businesses (not counting the costs to individuals) somewhere in the 10 Billion a year range, and you claim there is no cost shifting. That's why it's hard to have a reasonable discussion with you - facts have no bearing on what you believe.
Are those studies limited to ONLY legitimate spam, or are they inclusive of ALL spam? The latter are improperly conducted studies for justifying regulation per Central Hudson. And I'd be impressed if anyone's done a study of the former, accounted for the fact that opt out and notice would work, and still came up with a result that was even vaguely large.
This is just like before -- I'm saying that SOME spam is protected, therefore the only proper rebuttal you could make would be that SOME spam -- the SAME SOME spam -- is seriously problematic. It doesn't matter if all spam is problematic, since that's not what I'm saying is protected.
Bolger v Youngs Drugs which has nothing to do with cost shifting
Bolger says that recipients are going to have to tolerate some burden for the First Amendment to mean anything; this burden, I believe, includes bearing the costs shifted on to them, at least to some degree. There, sorting through and disposing of junk mail consumes resources. Sorting through and disposing of spam is not particularly difficult, especially given the benefit of filters, and the costs are similar.
Whoops. I made a small error in the above post. Where I said: Thus, if you cannot prove that ALL possible solutions less extensive than a blanket ban would have worked just as well -- you lose, that should read: Thus, if you cannot prove that ALL possible solutions less extensive than a blanket ban would not have worked just as well -- you lose.
That is, the regulation sought to be imposed must be the most minimal intrustion by the government possible; if it could have intruded less and still done what it was trying to do, the law is unconstitutional for failing to be sufficiently narrow.
Spam generally, yes.
Spam that is fraudulent, deceptive, or which concerns illegal activities, or which is sent by spammers who do not respect and adhere to actual or constructive 'no spam' notices, no.
Thus, I'm only willing to go so far as to defend essentially the least offensive spammers -- the ones that are not trying to scam you, who obey the law, and who will go away if you tell them to or warn them off in advance. I don't think that this class of spammers presents a threat. But it is the ONLY class of spammers that would be affected by a blanket anti-spam law, since we already HAVE laws which can deal with the rest of the spammers.
You continue to ignore the cost shifting.
No, I just don't believe that there is any substantial cost shifting occuring -- at least not by the class of spammers that I'm defending here.
Remember, to a certain extent, cost shifting is NOT sufficient grounds for regulation:
Bolger v. Youngs Drug Products, 463 US 60, 73 (1983)
Spam, I suspect, is no more burdensome than junk mail.
Challenges to the unsolicited fax laws have shown that cost shifted advertising isn't protected.
Actually, they have not. There haven't been many junk fax cases, and some have gone that way, and others have held the junk fax statute unconstitutional.
You've continued to ignore the fact that Central Hudson clearly explains that the government *does* have a right to regulate advertising when there is a compelling public interest.
To determine whether or not an antispam law would be constitutional you have to proceed through the following analysis:
I never said that any business can say anything it wants and advertise in any way it wants. I said that commercial speech is protected under the First Amendment.
These are not precisely the same thing, and my comments are chiefly intended to tear down the mistaken belief that shows up here again and again that commercial speech is wholly unprotected by the First Amendment.
I have REPEATEDLY pointed out that there is no protection afforded for fraudulent or deceptive commercial speech, nor commercial speech relating to illegal activities.
Central Hudson came about because of a *complete ban on any form of advertising, via any media, by electric companies*.
This is irrelevant. If the Supreme Court wanted to limit their decision to such a small set of circumstances, they were ENTIRELY able to do so. They did not, and in the nearly quarter-century since Central Hudson, they have never narrowed that holding in that way. Even where there is a limited ban on advertising, Central Hudson applies.
Central Hudson also specifically states that commercial speech is entitled to less protection than other forms of speech.
That's true. Of course, IIRC, this is due to the recognition that commercial speech is difficult to chill, not because the speakers are inherently bad or something.
But there _IS_ protection. Most people around here seem to not think that there is any. They are wrong.
I, OTOH, have never said that Central Hudson provided absolute protection. That would clearly be incompatable with the many posts I've been making over a long span of time indicating that I feel it is perfectly legal to, e.g. ban fraudulent or deceptive spam, or to ban spam sent despite actual or constructive notice by the recipient to not send spam. (as opposed to a blanket ban on spam that would violate Central Hudson)
It isn't a "We can do everything" talisman as you so often suggest.
I've never suggested that. Please show me a quote, in context, where you think that I have. If you can find one, I'll be impressed.
I would happily take SCO's money to not use Linux, especially given as how this fits in so nicely with my current plans to avoid Linux (and anything else even slightly Unixy) like the plague.
But with my luck they probably only pay in SCOland Fun Bucks or something.