I stick by my belief, though. The idea that we actually consider motive is very much part of the homicide laws of nearly every state in the US. Usually motive is at the heart of the difference between first and second degree murder. Hate crime laws really aren't, in my opinion, that different. Were the laws actionable without there being another crime, I'd have my shovels and pitchforks out, too.
And most of these "special circumstances" are not ignored by the courts. While they are ignored as "issues" by the media, they are ignored by them because they are uncontroversial... except for hate crimes.
But then i always come back to the cross burning thing, its a form of intimidation, not just at the target but at the larger community.
It certainly does harm to that larger community, particularly for communities that have a history of being targeted for violence, that is over and above the other sorts of harms that are done by the fire. It's a threat to anyone with half a brain, and threats of violence are usually uncontroversial, except for some reason in cases like these.
I don't see what is so hard about the idea that providing additional damages for additional harms. My state finds "additional harms" when murders are committed if you did it for money (your motivation is, remember, a "mindcrime"), if you kill a cable car operator, if you use poison instead of some other method, and so on, and recognizes those special harms as "special circumstances" which drastically change how someone can be penalized? Why do we never, ever, not frigging once hear about all of these inequalities in the law, and how some are mindcrimes?
Why is that?
I have a pretty easy explanation, which I'm sure is obvious, but seriously, anyone who thinks that hate crimes laws are a travesty of justice,... defend your quiet in regards to hundreds of other laws that fit the pattern you rail at. Bueller? Bueller? Anyone?
I assumed that "to nowhere" was a reference to the original leg which will be built, which comes nowhere near either city. As the news article linked in the story clearly states, there's some question about whether the state will maintain the political will to ever get the train line to SF or LA.
I support the idea, but it would be a shame if it only got built from one central valley farming community to another.
Hmmm, my last double-retraction for the evening. This page on Google's policy for removing links to allegedly infringing material is relevant: http://www.google.com/dmca.html
Time for bed, I'm obviously babbling. Sorry, folks.
When Bill dies the foundation can be passed down to his children without any inheritance taxes.
In other words, the Foundation continues to exist, and would still be subject to the same legal requirements about what happens with the money as already exists. If you mean to suggest that the children could drop the cash on hookers and blow, you simply don't understand the legalities involved.
You misunderstand. 3.8 billion is what they spent in 2009, they spent all of that figure. They have significantly more money than that.
I do not agree with your main point, though. Depending on the specific project involved, "blowing every penny you have" the first year can be madness. Vaccine research takes years to get from first investment to results, delivering vaccines or mosquito nets involves not only dropping the money but putting together an organization that can get those to the people who need them.
Spending at the "slow" rate of "only" four billion dollars a year doesn't seem that unreasonable to me. *shrug*
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is sitting on billions, but only spends 3% of their endowment in a given year.
The correct number is more like twice that, and is typical of foundations that spend money based on endowments, the point of an endowment is to allow an organization to do work over an extended period of time, something impossible to do if you spend 50% of your money every year.
If you looked at actual dollars handed out in a given year, I wouldn't be shocked if Google (and Google.org) hands out more cash than the Gates Foundation.
It ain't even close, you're off by at least two orders of magnitude.
The Gates Foundation has been asking others to give to them to hand out. The largest contributer to the Gates Foundation is Warren Buffet.
[citation needed]
Gates' donation to the foundation is of a similar size to Buffet's, the tho had known each other for many years (play bridge together, I'm told). The Gates Foundation survived for many years with no other contributions, and I'm unaware of a single dollar that's come from any other source.
There have been many well-researched in-depth pieces that suggest The Gates Foundation is doing more harm than good right now.
[citation needed]
The LA Times 2007 piece questioning the Foundations never made that particular claim, it did raise a signficant issue in that direction though. Because endowments must invest the money they hope to use for work in the future, conflicts arise when those investments do harm. It's entirely fair to say that it's irreponsible not to look those costs.
Of course, if you read, say, the articles in the Times that discussed this, you almost certainly saw the article in the Times a few days later saying that the Gates Foundation had decided to reassess its investments for social responsiblity.
(I'd admit, by the way, that those questions can still be pretty complex. A few obvious corporations aside, most corporations do quite a number of things, many of them bad, many of them good. "How much?" can be a very challenging thing to quantify.
When The Gates Foundation was pressed about it, they said they can't be bothered to research the firms they invest it.
[citation needed]
But there are people who've linked Gates Foundation investments to Microsoft contracts and strong-armed deals.
[citation needed]
Until it is clear that The Gates Foundation is doing more good than harm, I'm not sure we should be so quick to praise them, let alone donate money to them.
Nobody is asking you to, in fact, can you point me at a place where it is possible to donate to the Gates Foundation? No, you can't, because they don't accept external donations in general. Show me the donate button on this page, and we'll talk: http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Pages/home.aspx
Personally, I'd rather see this resolved by increased penalities for bogus takedown requests than by removing the takedown provisions completely. Most copyright violation claims are *small*, not the bit RIAA things you usually hear about. But copyright law is federal law, and there's no such thing as federal small claims court. (Maybe we need to fix that.) If I someone takes one of my images and uses it on the cover of a music CD they're widely commercially selling, the DMCA gives me a way of getting the record company to answer my calls and settle without a lawyer, on a claim worth only a few hundred bucks.
There's no way I could pay for even an initial consultation with a lawyer for a claim like that.
Some of the DMCA still has to go. Anti-circumvention is a fail. Perjury as a penalty has to be extended to any intentionally or grossly negligent claims of infringement. Etc. But takedown notices (I believe) can be a useful way of dealing with small (which is to say, the vast majority) of copyright claims in a low-overhead way.
That CD? The record company ignored my calls (as did the band) for two weeks until I DMCA'd the album cover on Amazon.com. Twenty minutes after Amazon accepted my takedown notice (and I provided clear examples of the image not only on my own site but in archive.org for years prior to the release of the CD), I had a phone call from the record company how they could fix this. I asked for a couple hundred bucks (twice market rates, but then I'd spent two weeks persuing this at that point, think of it as market rates plus minimum wage for my hassle), they sent funds via PayPal, I worked with them to reassure Amazon that the matter was settled, and worked to promote the album afterwards. No lawyers. No judges. No unreasonable damage to either me or the band in question.
Most copyright infringements are small. Federal civil courts cost tens of thousands of dollars to access. I believe there has to be a way of enforcing small copyrights in a low-overhead way, and that a well-designed takedown system could be part of such a system.
The perjury penalty only applies to saying you're the copyright owner (or entitled to speak on their behalf), nto the actual claim. My misunderstanding.
In theory, the penalty for falsely sending DMCA takedown notices is five years in prison. Perhaps the problem is enforcing that law, not making the penalty larger.
Slashdot Mirror
Correction: 190.25 (a). Sorry about that.
Yes, cable car operators are really in California law (and spelled out as such), but this is also true of bus and other public transit operators too.
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=pen&group=00001-01000&file=187-199
See at: 192.25 (a)
I stick by my belief, though. The idea that we actually consider motive is very much part of the homicide laws of nearly every state in the US. Usually motive is at the heart of the difference between first and second degree murder. Hate crime laws really aren't, in my opinion, that different. Were the laws actionable without there being another crime, I'd have my shovels and pitchforks out, too.
And most of these "special circumstances" are not ignored by the courts. While they are ignored as "issues" by the media, they are ignored by them because they are uncontroversial ... except for hate crimes.
Which is precisely my point.
But then i always come back to the cross burning thing, its a form of intimidation, not just at the target but at the larger community.
It certainly does harm to that larger community, particularly for communities that have a history of being targeted for violence, that is over and above the other sorts of harms that are done by the fire. It's a threat to anyone with half a brain, and threats of violence are usually uncontroversial, except for some reason in cases like these.
I don't see what is so hard about the idea that providing additional damages for additional harms. My state finds "additional harms" when murders are committed if you did it for money (your motivation is, remember, a "mindcrime"), if you kill a cable car operator, if you use poison instead of some other method, and so on, and recognizes those special harms as "special circumstances" which drastically change how someone can be penalized? Why do we never, ever, not frigging once hear about all of these inequalities in the law, and how some are mindcrimes?
Why is that?
I have a pretty easy explanation, which I'm sure is obvious, but seriously, anyone who thinks that hate crimes laws are a travesty of justice, ... defend your quiet in regards to hundreds of other laws that fit the pattern you rail at. Bueller? Bueller? Anyone?
I'm picturing a very old Fred Phelps holding up a sign that says "God hates fish!".
Shellfish! (www.godhatesshrimp.com)
Indeed, I'm very fond of those books as well.
http://www.bilerico.com/2011/12/im_the_red_kettle_menace.php
The Salvation Army is not anti-gay. Sure, they are not pro-gay, but that doesn't make the anti-gay.
Bull. Not providing services to homeless people *because* they're gay? That's anti-gay.
Threatening to pull out of providing services if they have to honor city laws on employment discrimination? That's anti-gay.
Get real. Do some research.
You may wish to finish reading the linked article, they're still working on the funding. But if they get it, there will be tickets. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/648673855/the-lightning-foundry
"fingers crossed, they'll be gone by then?"
What's our track record at closing government departments in this country?
The TSA has already commenced some freeway operations.
http://www.allgov.com/Controversies/ViewNews/Tennessee_First_State_to_Allow_TSA_Highway_Random_Search_Program_111108
I assumed that "to nowhere" was a reference to the original leg which will be built, which comes nowhere near either city. As the news article linked in the story clearly states, there's some question about whether the state will maintain the political will to ever get the train line to SF or LA.
I support the idea, but it would be a shame if it only got built from one central valley farming community to another.
Facebook's even going to notice that?
Hmmm, my last double-retraction for the evening. This page on Google's policy for removing links to allegedly infringing material is relevant: http://www.google.com/dmca.html
Time for bed, I'm obviously babbling. Sorry, folks.
I'm the above AC, because I was too lazy to log in, and I DRTFA before posting. None of those URLs are Googles, I'm sure they will laugh, and ignore.
Contract Bridge. It's not hard to google up references to it, e.g., http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2005-12-19-bridge-schools_x.htm
I know, I know, but .. but http://xkcd.com/386/ :p
When Bill dies the foundation can be passed down to his children without any inheritance taxes.
In other words, the Foundation continues to exist, and would still be subject to the same legal requirements about what happens with the money as already exists. If you mean to suggest that the children could drop the cash on hookers and blow, you simply don't understand the legalities involved.
You misunderstand. 3.8 billion is what they spent in 2009, they spent all of that figure. They have significantly more money than that.
I do not agree with your main point, though. Depending on the specific project involved, "blowing every penny you have" the first year can be madness. Vaccine research takes years to get from first investment to results, delivering vaccines or mosquito nets involves not only dropping the money but putting together an organization that can get those to the people who need them.
Spending at the "slow" rate of "only" four billion dollars a year doesn't seem that unreasonable to me. *shrug*
People are allowed to wear tin-foil hats with out backing up their facts.
You're right, I should have just said "you're full of $#$!."
See also: http://xkcd.com/285/
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is sitting on billions, but only spends 3% of their endowment in a given year.
The correct number is more like twice that, and is typical of foundations that spend money based on endowments, the point of an endowment is to allow an organization to do work over an extended period of time, something impossible to do if you spend 50% of your money every year.
If you looked at actual dollars handed out in a given year, I wouldn't be shocked if Google (and Google.org) hands out more cash than the Gates Foundation.
2009 Gates Foundation: $3.8B: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2632188420090126
Google.org's entire charitable endowment is less than a third of that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google.org.
It ain't even close, you're off by at least two orders of magnitude.
The Gates Foundation has been asking others to give to them to hand out. The largest contributer to the Gates Foundation is Warren Buffet.
[citation needed]
Gates' donation to the foundation is of a similar size to Buffet's, the tho had known each other for many years (play bridge together, I'm told). The Gates Foundation survived for many years with no other contributions, and I'm unaware of a single dollar that's come from any other source.
There have been many well-researched in-depth pieces that suggest The Gates Foundation is doing more harm than good right now.
[citation needed]
The LA Times 2007 piece questioning the Foundations never made that particular claim, it did raise a signficant issue in that direction though. Because endowments must invest the money they hope to use for work in the future, conflicts arise when those investments do harm. It's entirely fair to say that it's irreponsible not to look those costs.
Of course, if you read, say, the articles in the Times that discussed this, you almost certainly saw the article in the Times a few days later saying that the Gates Foundation had decided to reassess its investments for social responsiblity.
(I'd admit, by the way, that those questions can still be pretty complex. A few obvious corporations aside, most corporations do quite a number of things, many of them bad, many of them good. "How much?" can be a very challenging thing to quantify.
When The Gates Foundation was pressed about it, they said they can't be bothered to research the firms they invest it.
[citation needed]
But there are people who've linked Gates Foundation investments to Microsoft contracts and strong-armed deals.
[citation needed]
Until it is clear that The Gates Foundation is doing more good than harm, I'm not sure we should be so quick to praise them, let alone donate money to them.
Nobody is asking you to, in fact, can you point me at a place where it is possible to donate to the Gates Foundation? No, you can't, because they don't accept external donations in general. Show me the donate button on this page, and we'll talk:
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Pages/home.aspx
Indeed, I should have said hosting provider. Indeed. Thanks for the info.
Agreed in general, but an honest question:
"Every time the DMCA is used to remove content uploaded by a Canadian to a Canadian site"?
Canadian ISPs honor DMCA takedown notices? Wow.
I've been looking for something to substantiate your numbers. I'm not accusing you of being wrong, but the best number I saw was "more than a third aren't legit" from a briefing by Google to the NZ gov't ( http://www.newmediarights.org/copyright/digital_millennium_copyright_act_dmca/google_many_takedown_notices_are_baloney )
Personally, I'd rather see this resolved by increased penalities for bogus takedown requests than by removing the takedown provisions completely. Most copyright violation claims are *small*, not the bit RIAA things you usually hear about. But copyright law is federal law, and there's no such thing as federal small claims court. (Maybe we need to fix that.) If I someone takes one of my images and uses it on the cover of a music CD they're widely commercially selling, the DMCA gives me a way of getting the record company to answer my calls and settle without a lawyer, on a claim worth only a few hundred bucks.
There's no way I could pay for even an initial consultation with a lawyer for a claim like that.
Some of the DMCA still has to go. Anti-circumvention is a fail. Perjury as a penalty has to be extended to any intentionally or grossly negligent claims of infringement. Etc. But takedown notices (I believe) can be a useful way of dealing with small (which is to say, the vast majority) of copyright claims in a low-overhead way.
That CD? The record company ignored my calls (as did the band) for two weeks until I DMCA'd the album cover on Amazon.com. Twenty minutes after Amazon accepted my takedown notice (and I provided clear examples of the image not only on my own site but in archive.org for years prior to the release of the CD), I had a phone call from the record company how they could fix this. I asked for a couple hundred bucks (twice market rates, but then I'd spent two weeks persuing this at that point, think of it as market rates plus minimum wage for my hassle), they sent funds via PayPal, I worked with them to reassure Amazon that the matter was settled, and worked to promote the album afterwards. No lawyers. No judges. No unreasonable damage to either me or the band in question.
Most copyright infringements are small. Federal civil courts cost tens of thousands of dollars to access. I believe there has to be a way of enforcing small copyrights in a low-overhead way, and that a well-designed takedown system could be part of such a system.
The perjury penalty only applies to saying you're the copyright owner (or entitled to speak on their behalf), nto the actual claim. My misunderstanding.
In theory, the penalty for falsely sending DMCA takedown notices is five years in prison. Perhaps the problem is enforcing that law, not making the penalty larger.