Any prosecutor, in any reasonable system, must have the role described above ("According to Swedish law, the responsibility of the prosecutor is not to get the most severe punishment, but the most appropriate and lawful one. The prosecutor may not even prosecute if he/she is not reasonably sure it will result in a conviction.").
How else could a prosecutor's office work? Would she have to prosecute someone for reckless driving every time she saw it on her way to the office? Could she never decline to prosecute in the interest of justice?
Attorney General Robert Jackson gave a great speech once on the role of federal prosecutors. He was later appointed to the Supreme Court.
He said: "Nothing better can come out of this meeting of law enforcement officers than a rededication to the spirit of fair play and decency that should animate the federal prosecutor. Your positions are of such independence and importance that while you are being diligent, strict, and vigorous in law enforcement you can also afford to be just. Although the government technically loses its case, it has really won if justice has been done. The lawyer in public office is justified in seeking to leave behind him a good record."
The prosecutor is a minister of justice. If the one in your state or county doesn't measure up, hire a new one at the next election. If yours isn't elected, hire a new person for the job that comes with appointment powers. (For what it's worth, note that United States Attorneys are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate).
While some people don't really care if a webpage they reference later disappears, anyone running a scholarly publication needs to protect the integrity of his sources.
At the journal I work for, we print out copies of many online sources cited by our authors.
This works well for things like reports available online (e.g., something in PDF form) and much less well for a reference to a webpage in general (e.g., if someone writes "The Columbia Law School advertises its many course offerings in international law"--adding a link to the law school webpage as a reference--in an article about the proliferation of international law courses at major law schools). Unless one wants to print out the whole site, one is pretty much out of luck.
That aside, it's a good policy to archive print copies of web documents cited in a serious piece of research. That way, future researchers investigating the article can check the sources.
If you show me where the word "federal" appears in the Constitution, I'll answer your quiz.
In recent years (i.e., since the New Deal), Congress has enjoyed a fairly free hand to legislate on national issues, like narcotics, argiculture, health care, welfare, and the like -- much of which is not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution.
Even in the early days of the republic, the Congress enjoyed powers to establish a national bank, build post offices and post roads, and do other things necessary to the function of a national government.
True, the case you cited represents a scaling back of broad Commerce Power. But it hardly demonstrates an absence of national laws.
Saying America has no national laws, only federal laws, is a semantic game divorced from reality. The U.S., as a nation-state, has all sorts of national laws set by its central government. Call them what you will, they apply to the entire country.
No national laws besides the Constitution? That's totally wrong.
The Constitution (Article VI) itself says that the "supreme law of the land" shall be the Constitution and "the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof" (as well as treaties, but that's not important right now).
Some concrete examples? Consider the national laws we have on immigration, federal income taxes, and drugs. Not to mention the hundreds of other federal crimes written into the U.S. Code.
Congress passes national laws all the time. That's what Congress is for.
I'm amazed at how many posters self-rightously assert that one shouldn't report felonies he encounters at work.
I understand not wanting IT guys to become the copyright police, but serious felonies are different. If you see a man rape a coworker in the janitor's closet, shouldn't you call the cops? The law may not require you to speak up, but morality does.
So the question is, where does child porn fall on the spectrum ranging from jaywalking to serial killing? I think child porn -- given that the market for new images directly leads to the exploitation of helpless kids -- is pretty far on the serious end of the scale. We're not talking about a bootlegged copy of "Matrix Reloaded" here.
As to those calling for whistleblower protection, such laws exists for many federal and state issues. Learn more here.
From what I can tell, a bunch of posters seem to believe that the "chain of command" and other coprorate culturisms should have trumped the basic humanity demonstrated by the plaintiffs in the case here. Maybe the law school would have covered up the professor's wrongdoing or incompetently allowed him to destroy the evidence before the police arrived. The whistleblowers prevented that and set an example.
Unlike other "think of the children" laws, those banning child porn really do protect actual kids from real abuse.
Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) doesn't promise to remove cars altogether, but it would reduce the need for them tremendously.
It consists of small (1-4 passengers) elevated subway cars on a network of tracks. Passengers could ride alone or with friends, and each car could go to every station without stopping. So you'd walk to the station nearest you, wait a minute or so for a car to arrive, and go directly to the station nearest your desitination.
Major traffic centers (e.g., malls, hotels, office complexes) could have stations inside the building.
So far, Taxi2000 seems furthest ahead on the tech aspect. No, I don't own stock. I tried to buy some, but the company is selling only to large investors.
I suggest you read eBay v. Bidder's Edge (Court citation: 100 F.Supp.2d 1058).
In Bidder's Edge, the federal court granted eBay an injunction preventing Bidder's Edge from harvesting information from eBay's website for the purpose of using it on the Bidder's Edge site.
IANAL (but I will be in a couple years), so don't expect legal advice from me.
I think the Bidder's Edge case was decided on a weird basis (eBay has a right to protect its servers from harm), rather than the reasons you'd expect (eBay's data shouldn't be jacked by competitors and used to hurt eBay's business). Nonetheless, I expect other courts would rule the same way on a similar case.
Note: in this case, eBay has specifically told Bidder's Edge not to take the data.
Slashdot Mirror
Any prosecutor, in any reasonable system, must have the role described above ("According to Swedish law, the responsibility of the prosecutor is not to get the most severe punishment, but the most appropriate and lawful one. The prosecutor may not even prosecute if he/she is not reasonably sure it will result in a conviction.").
How else could a prosecutor's office work? Would she have to prosecute someone for reckless driving every time she saw it on her way to the office? Could she never decline to prosecute in the interest of justice?
Attorney General Robert Jackson gave a great speech once on the role of federal prosecutors. He was later appointed to the Supreme Court.
He said: "Nothing better can come out of this meeting of law enforcement officers than a rededication to the spirit of fair play and decency that should animate the federal prosecutor. Your positions are of such independence and importance that while you are being diligent, strict, and vigorous in law enforcement you can also afford to be just. Although the government technically loses its case, it has really won if justice has been done. The lawyer in public office is justified in seeking to leave behind him a good record."
The prosecutor is a minister of justice. If the one in your state or county doesn't measure up, hire a new one at the next election. If yours isn't elected, hire a new person for the job that comes with appointment powers. (For what it's worth, note that United States Attorneys are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate).
At the journal I work for, we print out copies of many online sources cited by our authors.
This works well for things like reports available online (e.g., something in PDF form) and much less well for a reference to a webpage in general (e.g., if someone writes "The Columbia Law School advertises its many course offerings in international law"--adding a link to the law school webpage as a reference--in an article about the proliferation of international law courses at major law schools). Unless one wants to print out the whole site, one is pretty much out of luck.
That aside, it's a good policy to archive print copies of web documents cited in a serious piece of research. That way, future researchers investigating the article can check the sources.
- Ben
In recent years (i.e., since the New Deal), Congress has enjoyed a fairly free hand to legislate on national issues, like narcotics, argiculture, health care, welfare, and the like -- much of which is not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution.
Even in the early days of the republic, the Congress enjoyed powers to establish a national bank, build post offices and post roads, and do other things necessary to the function of a national government.
True, the case you cited represents a scaling back of broad Commerce Power. But it hardly demonstrates an absence of national laws.
Saying America has no national laws, only federal laws, is a semantic game divorced from reality. The U.S., as a nation-state, has all sorts of national laws set by its central government. Call them what you will, they apply to the entire country.
- Ben
The Constitution (Article VI) itself says that the "supreme law of the land" shall be the Constitution and "the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof" (as well as treaties, but that's not important right now).
Some concrete examples? Consider the national laws we have on immigration, federal income taxes, and drugs. Not to mention the hundreds of other federal crimes written into the U.S. Code.
Congress passes national laws all the time. That's what Congress is for.
I understand not wanting IT guys to become the copyright police, but serious felonies are different. If you see a man rape a coworker in the janitor's closet, shouldn't you call the cops? The law may not require you to speak up, but morality does.
So the question is, where does child porn fall on the spectrum ranging from jaywalking to serial killing? I think child porn -- given that the market for new images directly leads to the exploitation of helpless kids -- is pretty far on the serious end of the scale. We're not talking about a bootlegged copy of "Matrix Reloaded" here.
As to those calling for whistleblower protection, such laws exists for many federal and state issues. Learn more here.
From what I can tell, a bunch of posters seem to believe that the "chain of command" and other coprorate culturisms should have trumped the basic humanity demonstrated by the plaintiffs in the case here. Maybe the law school would have covered up the professor's wrongdoing or incompetently allowed him to destroy the evidence before the police arrived. The whistleblowers prevented that and set an example.
Unlike other "think of the children" laws, those banning child porn really do protect actual kids from real abuse.
It consists of small (1-4 passengers) elevated subway cars on a network of tracks. Passengers could ride alone or with friends, and each car could go to every station without stopping. So you'd walk to the station nearest you, wait a minute or so for a car to arrive, and go directly to the station nearest your desitination.
Major traffic centers (e.g., malls, hotels, office complexes) could have stations inside the building.
So far, Taxi2000 seems furthest ahead on the tech aspect. No, I don't own stock. I tried to buy some, but the company is selling only to large investors.
In Bidder's Edge, the federal court granted eBay an injunction preventing Bidder's Edge from harvesting information from eBay's website for the purpose of using it on the Bidder's Edge site.
IANAL (but I will be in a couple years), so don't expect legal advice from me.
I think the Bidder's Edge case was decided on a weird basis (eBay has a right to protect its servers from harm), rather than the reasons you'd expect (eBay's data shouldn't be jacked by competitors and used to hurt eBay's business). Nonetheless, I expect other courts would rule the same way on a similar case.
Note: in this case, eBay has specifically told Bidder's Edge not to take the data.