After that, you seem to be saying that she had to do something, probably embarrassing, that she had no expectation of privacy for, since it was on somebody else's private property.
She has no expectation of privacy at a service window, just like she has no expectation of privacy in public streets. And she didn't "have to do" anything embarrassing: it's quite easy not to scream obscenities at employees, even while complaining; you should try it sometime.
she was legitimate prey, and responsible for every possible humiliation that followed
She wasn't "prey" and she wasn't "humiliated": she lost her temper and the same public that she makes a living from saw it and decided they didn't like her anymore. Both her celebrity status and her downfall are the result of amplifying her reach through modern technologies.
Are you normally the "let the companies screw the people" type,
No, I'm the type who upholds free speech and freedom of association.
Silly little boy, I'm saying that the environmental havoc in rainforest regions of the developing world is far far beyond the havoc that takes place in the US
Based on a Vice episode on palm oil, something that isn't even grown in California in significant amounts. Yeah, sure, makes sense. Moving right along...
Yes, and those places would need to burn down their rain forest to convert the land to commercial agriculture.
Commercial agriculture doesn't need to burn down rain forest; in fact, we need less and less farmland to feed the world because agriculture is getting more efficient. Rain forest destruction is mostly due to logging and small farmers.
But your reasoning is precious: you're saying that you favor massive crony capitalism and massive environmental destruction in the US because there is a possibility that some other nation may engage in unwise environmental policies. Wonderful. Thanks for clearing that up.
How about the fact that she had to go into that property?
She only "had to" go there because she previously violated someone else's property rights when she parked her car where she got towed.
I think it would benefit society if towing companies like that one were recorded in all actions, with the recordings available to the public.
Feel free to record whoever you want to in public spaces or on private property where you have permission.
I suspect that they have those cameras to record illegal actions (people have been known to pull guns to get their cars back), and consider it a violation of privacy to publish recordings otherwise.
You don't generally have an expectation of privacy on someone else's private property or on public property.
Farms: the northern half of the US is going to need to stop insisting on a seasonless produce aisle. Its unsustainable
It's quite sustainable if we import from South America. The reason we don't is because of powerful agricultural lobbies setting up trade barriers and getting subsidies in the US.
All the other points you make are lost in the noise.
No need to do anything. California is already losing residents due to high taxes, political corruption, and decaying infrastructure, and it's only going to get worse as its fiscal situation deteriorates further and further. People used to move to California because it was a nice place to live; now they move to California because they have to.
Not sure where you got the idea that agricultural water users pay nothing for water use.
Agricultural users pay a wide range of prices, from nothing to market prices. What they should be paying is the same price as everybody else.
Soil and climate determines that and, for the past century, California's had both the soil and the climate.
California doesn't have the climate; if it did, we wouldn't be having this discussion. In particular, California lacks the rain necessary to support its current agricultural output.
There are plenty of places that do have the climate and the rain and that would desperately like to export produce to the US, but the US agricultural lobby is keeping that from happening.
If the people in Liberalwood want to do something constructive,
If they did, they would stop subsidizing water use by farmers. Let everybody pay market prices for water and let market prices adjust according to demand, and the problem would solve itself. If that means desalination becomes cost effective, all the better.
I don't think anyone cares about "humane and sanitary". The people that want it abolished, want it abolished completely.
That's redundant.
The people in favor, tend to think shooting or hanging are fine.
That's because you think of people who are in favor of the death penalty as some kind of vindictive savages. Like most people, I don't feel very strongly about the death penalty. I think there are crimes that certainly deserve it, although I also feel somewhat uneasy giving that power to government. I think most people who want to abolish the death penalty just do it because their political tribe tells them to, not because they have done any particularly serious philosophical analysis. Like abortion and gay marriage, the death penalty in the US is a non-issue from a real-world point of view.
So, although I don't really care strongly either way, I think there should be plenty of safeguards before people are subjected to the death penalty (we have those in the US), and when the death penalty is applied, I believe it should be quick, reliable, and painless. I don't care about sanitary. So, firing squad and nitrogen are fine with me. Most other forms of execution fail that test.
So where does ruining a persons life because you saw a video of them doing something legal that you don't like (say, for example, holding an unpopular opinion) fit into your concept of a 'free' society?
How does me seeing a video ruin anybody's life? That's my individual choice, a right I should have in a free society.
For that matter, in a free society, I should also have the right to publish what I see, hear, or record, provided I do so truthfully.
How do you think it could work any other way in a free society? Free speech and free association are limits on government. They mean that there are no laws against you saying anything you like, and there are no laws against other people choosing not to associate with you for what you said.
I know nothing of these price gouging laws of which you speak. But then I live in a civilised country, where people aren't taught from birth to fuck each other over if possible.
Yes, you do live in a "civilised" country, where from birth on, you are taught to obey your masters and not to think for yourself. When you get fucked over, as you do every day, you say "harder, please!". Europe is full of people like you. I was born in such a "civilised" country myself and I left. I hope my new country will never become "civilised".
Oh, and Europe does have price gouging laws, and unlike the US, they apply even when there is no state of emergency.
Mostly shops are run by decent human beings so will strive to be open in times of need anyway because they don't want to cause even more suffering.
Really? So why do you need "price gouging laws"? In addition, decent human beings may simply not want to deal with you if you give them a big "fuck you" in the form of a price fixing law.
Sure it is, because the stock will sell far faster - assuming it's the kind of store that sells practical items.
Selling during an emergency means a lot of risk, in particular for smaller stores: the store keepers have their own families to worry about, they may want to keep supplies for their own safety, and there is a big risk in letting desperate mobs into their stores. Sure, big, nameless stores probably will do that. Small family run retailers will often prefer to close.
The difference is that 9/11 was a civil emergency, not just a period of high demand, and that gas is considered something essential to survival. Price gouging laws only apply to periods of civil emergencies, and only to a small list of essential goods. Such laws are nominally justified by helping police deal with the aftermath of the emergency. In all other situations, "price gouging" or demand pricing is legal everywhere. So your statement that "in pretty much every single other business" price gouging is illegal is utter nonsense.
As it turns out, "price gouging laws" are a bad idea in all circumstances; they simply create additional shortages, in particular in emergencies. Many stores will simply close altogether; it's not worth staying open in an emergency subject to price fixing laws if they can just sell at the same price after the emergency is over anyway. Government can impose prices, but it can't force people to do business.
The drive for essentially infinite copyrights comes mainly from the Walt Disney Corporations and the rest of the US Media.
The current, broken copyright system is the result of lobbying by European publishers, authors, and academics, who thought Europe would remain the center of publishing and culture for centuries (it was initiated by Victor Hugo, not much different from modern Hollywood celebrities asking for longer copyright terms). The US didn't implement the Berne Convention until 1988.
Copyright terms are set on a per-country basis under the Berne Convention, so whatever lobbying Disney does or doesn't do in the US shouldn't matter to you. And a lot of copyright-related lobbying in the US is lobbying by European publishers. Conversely, when European publishers and their political cronies push through their corrupt policies in Europe, they often use the excuse "the Americans made us do it", and uninformed folks like you believe it because it fits your prejudices.
Germany has perfectly effective legal sanctions in place to prohibit the distribution of Nazi propaganda - personally I think they're misguided, but they certainly doesn't rely on copyright law.
Incorrect. A major way in which Germany has been controlling the publication of "Mein Kampf" and similar literature is through copyright, which was transferred to the Bavarian state; without copyright protection, its distribution would likely be legal even in Germany. You must have been living under a rock, since the expiration of the copyright in 2016 has been a major issue in German politics. In addition, Longerich's legal defense is, in fact, attempting to argue that the copyright to Goebbel's diaries should also have been transferred to the Bavarian state.
The Third Reich was, on the whole, scrupulously legal. Once you have absolute power, passing laws to make your atrocities legal is trivial.
Indeed, German academics in the Third Reich were successful in getting special legal exemptions from the laws that applied to regular people. My point is that Longerich is part of a long tradition of German academics arguing that the rules that apply to everybody else shouldn't apply to them, because they are part of a superior class of human beings: intellectuals working for the betterment of society. I have no idea whether Longerich's work is valuable, but he should be subject to the same laws as everybody else; whether he is an academic or a ditch digger shouldn't make any difference.
East Germany indeed had a "surveillance society": asymmetric information government in which the state acquired great amounts of information on the citizens, and recorded and taped its citizens. East Germany also did what is typical of surveillance societies: it restricted the ability of private citizens to record and gather information.
A company using private security cameras on their private property, or a student or motorist using their cell phone cameras, to record others on their own property or in public is the opposite of a surveillance society; it's an essential part of living in a free society.
1- Britt had no reason to suspect she was being recorded
She was on private property, she looked into the surveillance camera, and she was told she was being recorded.
3- Who controls the cameras is the big deal. What if, in addition to the rant delivered by her, we saw EVERYTHING that happened in that business, from the cabs of the tow trucks to the office politics in the back to their normal customer relations?
It's their private property, it's their cameras, and they share whatever they want to. What problem do you have with that?
So it doesn't matter that some hot tempered cutie with a media job went off on some random people. That's not really helping society that she can't keep her ESPN job.
I think it would help society a great deal if people like her got fired, in a public way.
The workaround for (1) is that people will act like they are being recorded,
That's not a "workaround", it's the idea: if you are in a public place, or on someone else's private property, behave accordingly. In your own home, you can be as much of a jerk as you want to.
(2) is an issue because more and more jobs will fall into this category, resulting in minor altercations yielding a harsh streak of unemployment into a society already hellbent on assuming that ability is immediately rewarded with steady employment.
Minor altercations already result in loss of jobs for customer service employees; that's why employers monitor their employees.
Simply put, we have to stop assuming that people being taped doing something unusually angry, sexy, or kind, is a typical representation of those people
A "surveillance society" is a society in which the state intrudes into people's private lives, into their private data, and their homes. There is nothing good about such a society. And the surveillance is asymmetric: the state can record you, but government officials are largely protected from your scrutiny.
Private citizens, on the other hand, can only record each other in public, or on private property with the permission of the private property owner. That is not a "surveillance society", it's simple, basic property rights and freedom of speech. It's also symmetric: everybody has the same rights. We've had that since the founding of this nation. Sure, in the past, you could only record things in writing, now you can do it as video, but the principle is the same.
Longerich maintains this case has important censorship implications. “If you accept that a private person controls the rights to Goebbels’ diaries, then – theoretically – you give this person the right to control research,” he said.
A private person controls the rights to Goebbels' diaries until a court of law declares otherwise or they fall into the public domain for some other reason. Courts should have done this in the aftermath of WWII, but Germans wanted these copyrights to remain valid in order to control such writings. The writings could also have come into the public domain as part of some settlement to civil claims against the Goebbels estate. But since neither seems to have happened, the copyright still appears to be valid.
Arguing as if "research" should be exempted from the usual rule of law is particularly embarrassing for a German professor studying the Holocaust, since many atrocities were committed in the Third Reich because German academics considered themselves above the law and got away with it.
If Longerich can't make a convincing argument that these works are in the public domain or that he falls under a well-defined legal exemption, he can join the rest of us and work towards shorter copyright terms, broader fair use exemptions, and less draconian laws. Of course, he could also demonstrate good will by licensing his own works under a CC license.
I sincerely respect most of the views expressed on the subject over the last month or so. What I have not seen is any discussion on the fact that California grows a metric "Library of Congress" of shit in the central valley.
Why would it "go away"? It would simply be produced elsewhere, at whatever it actually costs, probably even cheaper (the same special interests that get cheap water also manage to keep prices high and imports restricted). Ideally, it might be imported from Central and South America, improving economic conditions there, lessening the refugee problem, and helping economic development, while providing us with cheaper food.
California is handling their water issue poorly; but they are, in effect, subsidising the rest of the country’s food prices.
And why is that a good thing? Food would be abundant and cheap in the US even without California; food makes up a tiny fraction of what Americans spend their money on. And agriculture and mining together only account for 2% of California's GDP.
But the water and money that flows into subsidizing agriculture in California comes from somewhere. And you may notice that California is also the tech hub of the nation, and it is paying dearly: agricultural subsidies and regulations contribute to land scarcity and make living in California harder and more costly. So, the dollar or two the rest of America may or may not save on groceries a month is likely paid for in substantially higher tech prices, and even worse, substantially slower tech innovation, and the long term costs of that are enormous.
Much of California is a mix of desert, grassland, and chaparral in its natural state. It wouldn't require any water or irrigation. The reason California has an insatiable appetite for water is because people insist on farming there, often with thirsty crops; and farming happens in California because water is effectively heavily subsidized. The solution to California's water problems is simple: have California farmers pay market rates for water and stop subsidizing farmers.
Most people buy Android phones because they are cheap only few care about the supposed "openness".
No, they care about all the other stuff, like location services, maps that work, browsers that sync seamlessly, etc.
Google apps are just as good on the iPhone as they are on Android.
Some Google apps aren't available at all for iOS. Many that are have limited functionality relative to Android. If you use the Nexus 7 as a secondary device, you probably don't even know what you're missing.
By definition, data you explicitly send via a GET request (what little there is) is not "data that the user wants to keep private" as it is the user who deliberately and explicitly sent it.
And, by definition, if you buy an Android phone and sign in with a Google account, you want your data synced with Google servers.
Further, responding to a GET request does not in any way require spreading that data.
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She has no expectation of privacy at a service window, just like she has no expectation of privacy in public streets. And she didn't "have to do" anything embarrassing: it's quite easy not to scream obscenities at employees, even while complaining; you should try it sometime.
She wasn't "prey" and she wasn't "humiliated": she lost her temper and the same public that she makes a living from saw it and decided they didn't like her anymore. Both her celebrity status and her downfall are the result of amplifying her reach through modern technologies.
No, I'm the type who upholds free speech and freedom of association.
Based on a Vice episode on palm oil, something that isn't even grown in California in significant amounts. Yeah, sure, makes sense. Moving right along...
Commercial agriculture doesn't need to burn down rain forest; in fact, we need less and less farmland to feed the world because agriculture is getting more efficient. Rain forest destruction is mostly due to logging and small farmers.
But your reasoning is precious: you're saying that you favor massive crony capitalism and massive environmental destruction in the US because there is a possibility that some other nation may engage in unwise environmental policies. Wonderful. Thanks for clearing that up.
She only "had to" go there because she previously violated someone else's property rights when she parked her car where she got towed.
Feel free to record whoever you want to in public spaces or on private property where you have permission.
You don't generally have an expectation of privacy on someone else's private property or on public property.
But the conditions have not changed; California has never had the climate: it's always been too dry for this kind of agriculture.
It's quite sustainable if we import from South America. The reason we don't is because of powerful agricultural lobbies setting up trade barriers and getting subsidies in the US.
All the other points you make are lost in the noise.
No need to do anything. California is already losing residents due to high taxes, political corruption, and decaying infrastructure, and it's only going to get worse as its fiscal situation deteriorates further and further. People used to move to California because it was a nice place to live; now they move to California because they have to.
Agricultural users pay a wide range of prices, from nothing to market prices. What they should be paying is the same price as everybody else.
California doesn't have the climate; if it did, we wouldn't be having this discussion. In particular, California lacks the rain necessary to support its current agricultural output.
There are plenty of places that do have the climate and the rain and that would desperately like to export produce to the US, but the US agricultural lobby is keeping that from happening.
If they did, they would stop subsidizing water use by farmers. Let everybody pay market prices for water and let market prices adjust according to demand, and the problem would solve itself. If that means desalination becomes cost effective, all the better.
I should hope not, given that its self similarity and the fractal dimension of its boundary are established mathematical results.
That's redundant.
That's because you think of people who are in favor of the death penalty as some kind of vindictive savages. Like most people, I don't feel very strongly about the death penalty. I think there are crimes that certainly deserve it, although I also feel somewhat uneasy giving that power to government. I think most people who want to abolish the death penalty just do it because their political tribe tells them to, not because they have done any particularly serious philosophical analysis. Like abortion and gay marriage, the death penalty in the US is a non-issue from a real-world point of view.
So, although I don't really care strongly either way, I think there should be plenty of safeguards before people are subjected to the death penalty (we have those in the US), and when the death penalty is applied, I believe it should be quick, reliable, and painless. I don't care about sanitary. So, firing squad and nitrogen are fine with me. Most other forms of execution fail that test.
How does me seeing a video ruin anybody's life? That's my individual choice, a right I should have in a free society.
For that matter, in a free society, I should also have the right to publish what I see, hear, or record, provided I do so truthfully.
How do you think it could work any other way in a free society? Free speech and free association are limits on government. They mean that there are no laws against you saying anything you like, and there are no laws against other people choosing not to associate with you for what you said.
Yes, you do live in a "civilised" country, where from birth on, you are taught to obey your masters and not to think for yourself. When you get fucked over, as you do every day, you say "harder, please!". Europe is full of people like you. I was born in such a "civilised" country myself and I left. I hope my new country will never become "civilised".
Oh, and Europe does have price gouging laws, and unlike the US, they apply even when there is no state of emergency.
Really? So why do you need "price gouging laws"? In addition, decent human beings may simply not want to deal with you if you give them a big "fuck you" in the form of a price fixing law.
Selling during an emergency means a lot of risk, in particular for smaller stores: the store keepers have their own families to worry about, they may want to keep supplies for their own safety, and there is a big risk in letting desperate mobs into their stores. Sure, big, nameless stores probably will do that. Small family run retailers will often prefer to close.
The difference is that 9/11 was a civil emergency, not just a period of high demand, and that gas is considered something essential to survival. Price gouging laws only apply to periods of civil emergencies, and only to a small list of essential goods. Such laws are nominally justified by helping police deal with the aftermath of the emergency. In all other situations, "price gouging" or demand pricing is legal everywhere. So your statement that "in pretty much every single other business" price gouging is illegal is utter nonsense.
As it turns out, "price gouging laws" are a bad idea in all circumstances; they simply create additional shortages, in particular in emergencies. Many stores will simply close altogether; it's not worth staying open in an emergency subject to price fixing laws if they can just sell at the same price after the emergency is over anyway. Government can impose prices, but it can't force people to do business.
The current, broken copyright system is the result of lobbying by European publishers, authors, and academics, who thought Europe would remain the center of publishing and culture for centuries (it was initiated by Victor Hugo, not much different from modern Hollywood celebrities asking for longer copyright terms). The US didn't implement the Berne Convention until 1988.
Copyright terms are set on a per-country basis under the Berne Convention, so whatever lobbying Disney does or doesn't do in the US shouldn't matter to you. And a lot of copyright-related lobbying in the US is lobbying by European publishers. Conversely, when European publishers and their political cronies push through their corrupt policies in Europe, they often use the excuse "the Americans made us do it", and uninformed folks like you believe it because it fits your prejudices.
Incorrect. A major way in which Germany has been controlling the publication of "Mein Kampf" and similar literature is through copyright, which was transferred to the Bavarian state; without copyright protection, its distribution would likely be legal even in Germany. You must have been living under a rock, since the expiration of the copyright in 2016 has been a major issue in German politics. In addition, Longerich's legal defense is, in fact, attempting to argue that the copyright to Goebbel's diaries should also have been transferred to the Bavarian state.
Indeed, German academics in the Third Reich were successful in getting special legal exemptions from the laws that applied to regular people. My point is that Longerich is part of a long tradition of German academics arguing that the rules that apply to everybody else shouldn't apply to them, because they are part of a superior class of human beings: intellectuals working for the betterment of society. I have no idea whether Longerich's work is valuable, but he should be subject to the same laws as everybody else; whether he is an academic or a ditch digger shouldn't make any difference.
East Germany indeed had a "surveillance society": asymmetric information government in which the state acquired great amounts of information on the citizens, and recorded and taped its citizens. East Germany also did what is typical of surveillance societies: it restricted the ability of private citizens to record and gather information.
A company using private security cameras on their private property, or a student or motorist using their cell phone cameras, to record others on their own property or in public is the opposite of a surveillance society; it's an essential part of living in a free society.
She was on private property, she looked into the surveillance camera, and she was told she was being recorded.
It's their private property, it's their cameras, and they share whatever they want to. What problem do you have with that?
I think it would help society a great deal if people like her got fired, in a public way.
That's not a "workaround", it's the idea: if you are in a public place, or on someone else's private property, behave accordingly. In your own home, you can be as much of a jerk as you want to.
Minor altercations already result in loss of jobs for customer service employees; that's why employers monitor their employees.
Who is assuming?
A "surveillance society" is a society in which the state intrudes into people's private lives, into their private data, and their homes. There is nothing good about such a society. And the surveillance is asymmetric: the state can record you, but government officials are largely protected from your scrutiny.
Private citizens, on the other hand, can only record each other in public, or on private property with the permission of the private property owner. That is not a "surveillance society", it's simple, basic property rights and freedom of speech. It's also symmetric: everybody has the same rights. We've had that since the founding of this nation. Sure, in the past, you could only record things in writing, now you can do it as video, but the principle is the same.
A private person controls the rights to Goebbels' diaries until a court of law declares otherwise or they fall into the public domain for some other reason. Courts should have done this in the aftermath of WWII, but Germans wanted these copyrights to remain valid in order to control such writings. The writings could also have come into the public domain as part of some settlement to civil claims against the Goebbels estate. But since neither seems to have happened, the copyright still appears to be valid.
Arguing as if "research" should be exempted from the usual rule of law is particularly embarrassing for a German professor studying the Holocaust, since many atrocities were committed in the Third Reich because German academics considered themselves above the law and got away with it.
If Longerich can't make a convincing argument that these works are in the public domain or that he falls under a well-defined legal exemption, he can join the rest of us and work towards shorter copyright terms, broader fair use exemptions, and less draconian laws. Of course, he could also demonstrate good will by licensing his own works under a CC license.
Nixing individual mergers doesn't help anything. What government should do is nix the regulations that created these monopolies in the first place.
Why would it "go away"? It would simply be produced elsewhere, at whatever it actually costs, probably even cheaper (the same special interests that get cheap water also manage to keep prices high and imports restricted). Ideally, it might be imported from Central and South America, improving economic conditions there, lessening the refugee problem, and helping economic development, while providing us with cheaper food.
And why is that a good thing? Food would be abundant and cheap in the US even without California; food makes up a tiny fraction of what Americans spend their money on. And agriculture and mining together only account for 2% of California's GDP.
But the water and money that flows into subsidizing agriculture in California comes from somewhere. And you may notice that California is also the tech hub of the nation, and it is paying dearly: agricultural subsidies and regulations contribute to land scarcity and make living in California harder and more costly. So, the dollar or two the rest of America may or may not save on groceries a month is likely paid for in substantially higher tech prices, and even worse, substantially slower tech innovation, and the long term costs of that are enormous.
Much of California is a mix of desert, grassland, and chaparral in its natural state. It wouldn't require any water or irrigation. The reason California has an insatiable appetite for water is because people insist on farming there, often with thirsty crops; and farming happens in California because water is effectively heavily subsidized. The solution to California's water problems is simple: have California farmers pay market rates for water and stop subsidizing farmers.
No, they care about all the other stuff, like location services, maps that work, browsers that sync seamlessly, etc.
Some Google apps aren't available at all for iOS. Many that are have limited functionality relative to Android. If you use the Nexus 7 as a secondary device, you probably don't even know what you're missing.
And, by definition, if you buy an Android phone and sign in with a Google account, you want your data synced with Google servers.
How does Google "spread" your data?