I think the point is though, did these changes occur due to special programs and societies to encourage women to get into the field and fire doctors who made a badly timed penis joke or was it a combination of social molding and personal interest that got women into the field?
I'm sure it would, but again, the effects and protection these policies provide have only slightly to do with their actual results and almost completely to do with their appearances. As long as they can maintain a policy of using the most severe punishment availible, they will remain free from hassle in regards to questioning their equal application of the policy.
Think of it less as Pascal's wager and more of a form of insurance. A policy is in effect which has the good potential in the longrun to cost more than it will ever prevent (like your car insurance for example) but has the bennefit of preventing the hassal and major loss resulting from a single large incident. Over your lifetime, you will presumeably pay more into insurances than you will ever get out of them, and ideally that's how it would work, no one wants to use their insurance, but sometimes you have to. By paying for that insurance, you reduce or eliminate the costs associated with a larger problem. By paying for lost business from customers inconvenienced by zero tollerance policies, the company has a massive and effective defense against larger discrimination charges or similar disasters.
I agree that zero tolerance is a load of crap, but it's the safest route from a business perspective. And this isn't some irrational fear. As a coincidental example, today, myself and my employees were all charged with racial discrimination because we enforced and stuck to our policy on identification acceptance. A policy which has been standing the same for 5 years, and a policy which the accuser admited to running into before. Despite the fact that the policy is enforced equally, all the time, every time, we were accused of being racist simply because we were of one race, and accuser was of another and she wasn't getting her way. And unfortunately, this happens with far more frequency than you would think. I don't speak from nameless irrational fear, I speak from direct experience of being accused on a basis that is too frequent for comfort.
It could apply easily that way. Until the one time they change the policy or apply it differently for a different set of circumstances. Again, the point is that all events are treated 100% equally in the interests of appearing fair and non discriminatory. The safest route is to use the most severe punishment you can in all circumstances, so that you are never in the position of needing to use a severe punishment but are unable to due to potential problems.
But it's obvious that it costs less. Just think about it. When the theater presses charges, they have not only the backing of the studio, but control over the case, which means after the news cameras go away, they can settle quickly and quietly. And the bad press they rack up lasts until the next X-Man XXVII: Wolverine Gets Dentures movie. By comparison, a long drawn out multi month multi million dollar discrimination suit leaves them on their own ("Universal pictures has a zero tollerance policy, we don't condone the cinima's dicriminatory actions") and they have no control, the lawsuit goes away when they either pay the extortion money or fight it through the courts. If I were a business, I know which policy I would prefer.
It doesn't matter if they miss the white man, as long as they really miss him, and arrest him as soon as he's pointed out. See you're forgetting that the protection from lawsuit that zero tollerance provides is not a matter of the results, but a matter of the intent and effect of the policy. Whether the zero tollerance policy actually makes it so that everyone is equally arrested is irellevent, just so long as the policy applies equally to everyone and is applied when it's directly questioned.
As for the other bullshits you point out, ever wonder why the policy for NC-17 is to card everyone that looks younger than 40?
You're assuming all actions have an equal consequence. Here's what happens though:
1) Prosecute everyone. Consequence: Some people get pissed, everyone else calls the idiots filming dumbasses, their seats get filled by smarter consumers with more money to spend.
2) Prosecute only some people. Consequence: Get slapped with a discrimination lawsuit which will be fought soley by the theater (after all says the movie studio, it isn't our policy to only kick out the chinese), theater suffers major financial loss, potential to shut down theater.
3) Let everyone record, prosecute noone. Consequence: Studios stop selling you films to show, without Harry Potter and the Amazing Nerd Orgasm, theater can't compete with other theaters, loses money, shuts down.
Remember, theaters are just as evil money grubbing souless companies as every other corporation we like to hate here on slashdot (the almighty Google and Apple excluded of course). If their current course of action was more expensive than another course, they wouldn't do it.
Right, but arresting and prosecuting even a thousand people a year in civil court is still cheaper than one drawn out discrimination lawsuit. Look at it this way. If doing this to everyone taking shots with their camera phone was more expensive than dealing with discrimination lawsuits and the like thta arise from using discretion, they wouldn't do it. They're a business after all.
Right, it took minutes for the police to show up. Are you suggesting that they let her film until the police arrived without approaching her? The most rellevant question to ask is did she stop filming before they approached her?
Not at all, just pointing out fact. The reason why little old ladies get stoped at the airport is the same reason why colleges have quotas, schools have zero tollerance policies, chistmas carols are banned at school and the wearing of a veil to school is prohibited. It's the same reason why this girl is prosecuted and why the theft of a 50 candy bar and a $5000 TV are considered the same to wal-mart.
Discretion is discrimination.
The problem is, just like every other zero tollerance policy, the public at large, and more specifically the courts do not distinguish between "good" discrimination and "bad" discrimination. As a result, no one else will distinguish "good" bad acts vs "bad" bad acts. Hence zero tollerance is born.
It's not that they can't. It's that doing so will result in multi million dollar lawsuits. It's cheaper for them to press charges against everyone than not.
Right, but if you choose to let the white guy that bumps into you go, but charge the mexican who trips you and sprains your hand, you won't get slapped with a multi million dollar discrimination lawsuit. They theater will.
Question: How is Regal in a position to KNOW whether this act is a willful violation of copyright (for that matter, that's already been admitted). Do they have a right to see what's on her camcorder? Is that a policy you really want to set? So how do they KNOW she only get 20 seconds? And how do they KNOW that she didn't intend to record longer than that 20 seconds that she was recording before they caught her?
Which wastes less court time, pressing charges against every person who records in a theater and letting a judge look at the evidence or dealing with endless streams of discrimination lawsuits when your discretion leads to someone feeling (or claiming to feel) discriminated?
Welcome to the world of lawsuit fearful companies. It's not that they can't train their managers to use discretion, it's that they can get into serious trouble for it. What happens when there's two people, a black man and a mexican recording. The usher comes down the aisles and since he's only one person, he can only address one person at a time without disturbing others. So he hits up the mexican first, confiscates the camera and puts it in the managers office for pickup after the film. Then he moves on to the black man. This time however, the man refuses to give up his camera, the manager is called in to eject the man from the theater. Say hello to discrimination lawsuit. It doesn't matter if the claim is baseless or not, it will go to court (or be settled out of court), and the company will spend money on it. It's much easier, cheaper and safer to just have a blanket policy of arresting and pressing charges against everyone. Until such a time as people stop using baseless lawsuits to get their way, zero tolerance policies will rule the day because they are the safest policies to enforce. That's not to say they're good policies, just the simplest and least hassle.
You are missing my point. I am not saying that selling used items should be illegal. I am not saying that a manufacturer should be held liable for used items that you sell. I am saying that purchasing something from anyone with an intent to resell that product, especially if you are making profit off of it or turing it into a business, greatly impacts the first sale rights that you have. If you are going to position yourself in such a way that you are a distributor or reseller (or are percieved as a distributor or a reseller) of someone's product, then the rules of the game change for you. Whether this is good or bad or whether it is a valid analysis of the cases at hand I am not saying, I am merely pointing out that "first sale" is not an end all be all and that this case is more complicated than that.
The point is, you can sue the manufacturer, and therefore the manufacturer has an interest in ensuring that the people who are acting as resellers are indeed resellers and complying with all the rules therein. Even if their system rejects it, and even if it goes in the trash or is sold as scrap, if they know that someone is taking it, turning around and selling it at profit and acting as a reseller, but still turn a blind eye to it, you better believe that they would be held liable. Caveat emptor is great, but our laws are not structured to promote that concept these days.
[quote]can you state a clear logical reason why not? Once I buy it, I should be able to do whatever I want to with that product.[/quote]
I thought I just did, or do you believe that Joe Freedom should be allowed to continue unimpeded? It was no pity play, it was a very specific senario to display the purposes of the laws in place. Intent to resell does have an effect on your ability to resell, and it's that way for a specific reason. Just because in this instance it doesn't agree with your politics doesn't mean it's not valid or that it shouldn't be considered. It's a complex issue and saying that "I bought it, it's mine and I can do whatever the fuck I want with it and resell it to whomever and however I want" is a simple blanket statement that has the potential to have very determental effects on the market as you know it.
But do you know whether or not the parts that JimsCars is selling on eBay met all the safety standards that the parts are supposed to meet and that he didn't just buy the QC rejects from the company?
I'm sure the companies are arguing (and perhaps not without merit) that first sale applies only to the end user or the consumer. If you purchase with intent to resell, that makes you a retailer or distributor and thus subject to different rules. There is some merit to this point of view. Consider that resellers, retailers and distributors are required by law to follow certain processes, laws and regulations. Among these are verious health regulations for the food industry.
Let's say that Evil Corp Foods sells their food product to Massive Grocery. Laws dictate that in order for Massive Grocery to leagaly sell ECF's product, it must be sold within 30 days of being recieved at an MG location. Day 29 arrives, MG marks down some of it's ECF stock to sell off and at least make some profit on. Joe Freedom buys it. It sits on his shelf for a few days, at which point he realizes he didn't really need it, but a friend does, so he sells it to his friend, at a hair more than he paid, but less than MG sells it for. So far so good, everyone wins.
But let's say that Joe Freedom's friend gets sick from the food product. Currently, it was a rotten thing for Joe Freedom to do to his friend, but not illegal and certainly (most likely) not intentional.
But let's now say that Joe Freedom is doing this every week. Buying the dicounted food product from MG and turning arround and selling it at a profit to people in his neighborhood and on craigslist. Now more people are getting sick. Not all of them, only some, but say it's still something like 10% or 20%. Shouldn't Joe Freedom be subject to the same health regulations that MG and ECF are? Don't you think that ECF might have an interest (and a valid one) in shutting Joe Freedom down since it's their product, money and their reputation on the line (even though they didn't sell it to the people that got sick)?
In a world where a company is responsible for the stupidity of people that buy their products, does it not suprise you that companies have a vested interest in tighly controling their supply line?
This is not as black and white as it seems at first glance, and certainly there is no easy answer, but just like any other freedom, first sale is not and can not be absolute.
Consider the other side of the coin though. If everyone knows everything about me at any time, then I can always prove that the identity theft that was comitted was actual theft, and not me just trying to get a free computer. Consider the recent rape case at duke. One student could almost completely prove they weren't there for the alleged rape based on a series of privacy invasions (taxi records, dorm records, ATM suvielence records and cell phone records). Without any of those records, it would have been a he said she said argument.
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with all the RAM you get in normal PCs now days (4gigabytes not unusual) is this not a little strange?
Where are you buying your computers? Even the $6000 gaming system from dell comes with 2GB by default.
I think the point is though, did these changes occur due to special programs and societies to encourage women to get into the field and fire doctors who made a badly timed penis joke or was it a combination of social molding and personal interest that got women into the field?
I'm sure it would, but again, the effects and protection these policies provide have only slightly to do with their actual results and almost completely to do with their appearances. As long as they can maintain a policy of using the most severe punishment availible, they will remain free from hassle in regards to questioning their equal application of the policy.
Think of it less as Pascal's wager and more of a form of insurance. A policy is in effect which has the good potential in the longrun to cost more than it will ever prevent (like your car insurance for example) but has the bennefit of preventing the hassal and major loss resulting from a single large incident. Over your lifetime, you will presumeably pay more into insurances than you will ever get out of them, and ideally that's how it would work, no one wants to use their insurance, but sometimes you have to. By paying for that insurance, you reduce or eliminate the costs associated with a larger problem. By paying for lost business from customers inconvenienced by zero tollerance policies, the company has a massive and effective defense against larger discrimination charges or similar disasters.
I agree that zero tolerance is a load of crap, but it's the safest route from a business perspective. And this isn't some irrational fear. As a coincidental example, today, myself and my employees were all charged with racial discrimination because we enforced and stuck to our policy on identification acceptance. A policy which has been standing the same for 5 years, and a policy which the accuser admited to running into before. Despite the fact that the policy is enforced equally, all the time, every time, we were accused of being racist simply because we were of one race, and accuser was of another and she wasn't getting her way. And unfortunately, this happens with far more frequency than you would think. I don't speak from nameless irrational fear, I speak from direct experience of being accused on a basis that is too frequent for comfort.
It could apply easily that way. Until the one time they change the policy or apply it differently for a different set of circumstances. Again, the point is that all events are treated 100% equally in the interests of appearing fair and non discriminatory. The safest route is to use the most severe punishment you can in all circumstances, so that you are never in the position of needing to use a severe punishment but are unable to due to potential problems.
But it's obvious that it costs less. Just think about it. When the theater presses charges, they have not only the backing of the studio, but control over the case, which means after the news cameras go away, they can settle quickly and quietly. And the bad press they rack up lasts until the next X-Man XXVII: Wolverine Gets Dentures movie. By comparison, a long drawn out multi month multi million dollar discrimination suit leaves them on their own ("Universal pictures has a zero tollerance policy, we don't condone the cinima's dicriminatory actions") and they have no control, the lawsuit goes away when they either pay the extortion money or fight it through the courts. If I were a business, I know which policy I would prefer.
It doesn't matter if they miss the white man, as long as they really miss him, and arrest him as soon as he's pointed out. See you're forgetting that the protection from lawsuit that zero tollerance provides is not a matter of the results, but a matter of the intent and effect of the policy. Whether the zero tollerance policy actually makes it so that everyone is equally arrested is irellevent, just so long as the policy applies equally to everyone and is applied when it's directly questioned.
As for the other bullshits you point out, ever wonder why the policy for NC-17 is to card everyone that looks younger than 40?
You're assuming all actions have an equal consequence. Here's what happens though:
1) Prosecute everyone. Consequence: Some people get pissed, everyone else calls the idiots filming dumbasses, their seats get filled by smarter consumers with more money to spend.
2) Prosecute only some people. Consequence: Get slapped with a discrimination lawsuit which will be fought soley by the theater (after all says the movie studio, it isn't our policy to only kick out the chinese), theater suffers major financial loss, potential to shut down theater.
3) Let everyone record, prosecute noone. Consequence: Studios stop selling you films to show, without Harry Potter and the Amazing Nerd Orgasm, theater can't compete with other theaters, loses money, shuts down.
Remember, theaters are just as evil money grubbing souless companies as every other corporation we like to hate here on slashdot (the almighty Google and Apple excluded of course). If their current course of action was more expensive than another course, they wouldn't do it.
Right, but arresting and prosecuting even a thousand people a year in civil court is still cheaper than one drawn out discrimination lawsuit. Look at it this way. If doing this to everyone taking shots with their camera phone was more expensive than dealing with discrimination lawsuits and the like thta arise from using discretion, they wouldn't do it. They're a business after all.
Right, it took minutes for the police to show up. Are you suggesting that they let her film until the police arrived without approaching her? The most rellevant question to ask is did she stop filming before they approached her?
Not at all, just pointing out fact. The reason why little old ladies get stoped at the airport is the same reason why colleges have quotas, schools have zero tollerance policies, chistmas carols are banned at school and the wearing of a veil to school is prohibited. It's the same reason why this girl is prosecuted and why the theft of a 50 candy bar and a $5000 TV are considered the same to wal-mart.
Discretion is discrimination.
The problem is, just like every other zero tollerance policy, the public at large, and more specifically the courts do not distinguish between "good" discrimination and "bad" discrimination. As a result, no one else will distinguish "good" bad acts vs "bad" bad acts. Hence zero tollerance is born.
Do you really want to give theaters the power to view what's on your recording device?
It's not that they can't. It's that doing so will result in multi million dollar lawsuits. It's cheaper for them to press charges against everyone than not.
Right, but if you choose to let the white guy that bumps into you go, but charge the mexican who trips you and sprains your hand, you won't get slapped with a multi million dollar discrimination lawsuit. They theater will.
Question: How is Regal in a position to KNOW whether this act is a willful violation of copyright (for that matter, that's already been admitted). Do they have a right to see what's on her camcorder? Is that a policy you really want to set? So how do they KNOW she only get 20 seconds? And how do they KNOW that she didn't intend to record longer than that 20 seconds that she was recording before they caught her?
Which wastes less court time, pressing charges against every person who records in a theater and letting a judge look at the evidence or dealing with endless streams of discrimination lawsuits when your discretion leads to someone feeling (or claiming to feel) discriminated?
Welcome to the world of lawsuit fearful companies. It's not that they can't train their managers to use discretion, it's that they can get into serious trouble for it. What happens when there's two people, a black man and a mexican recording. The usher comes down the aisles and since he's only one person, he can only address one person at a time without disturbing others. So he hits up the mexican first, confiscates the camera and puts it in the managers office for pickup after the film. Then he moves on to the black man. This time however, the man refuses to give up his camera, the manager is called in to eject the man from the theater. Say hello to discrimination lawsuit. It doesn't matter if the claim is baseless or not, it will go to court (or be settled out of court), and the company will spend money on it. It's much easier, cheaper and safer to just have a blanket policy of arresting and pressing charges against everyone. Until such a time as people stop using baseless lawsuits to get their way, zero tolerance policies will rule the day because they are the safest policies to enforce. That's not to say they're good policies, just the simplest and least hassle.
You are missing my point. I am not saying that selling used items should be illegal. I am not saying that a manufacturer should be held liable for used items that you sell. I am saying that purchasing something from anyone with an intent to resell that product, especially if you are making profit off of it or turing it into a business, greatly impacts the first sale rights that you have. If you are going to position yourself in such a way that you are a distributor or reseller (or are percieved as a distributor or a reseller) of someone's product, then the rules of the game change for you. Whether this is good or bad or whether it is a valid analysis of the cases at hand I am not saying, I am merely pointing out that "first sale" is not an end all be all and that this case is more complicated than that.
The point is, you can sue the manufacturer, and therefore the manufacturer has an interest in ensuring that the people who are acting as resellers are indeed resellers and complying with all the rules therein. Even if their system rejects it, and even if it goes in the trash or is sold as scrap, if they know that someone is taking it, turning around and selling it at profit and acting as a reseller, but still turn a blind eye to it, you better believe that they would be held liable. Caveat emptor is great, but our laws are not structured to promote that concept these days.
[quote]can you state a clear logical reason why not?
Once I buy it, I should be able to do whatever I want to with that product.[/quote]
I thought I just did, or do you believe that Joe Freedom should be allowed to continue unimpeded? It was no pity play, it was a very specific senario to display the purposes of the laws in place. Intent to resell does have an effect on your ability to resell, and it's that way for a specific reason. Just because in this instance it doesn't agree with your politics doesn't mean it's not valid or that it shouldn't be considered. It's a complex issue and saying that "I bought it, it's mine and I can do whatever the fuck I want with it and resell it to whomever and however I want" is a simple blanket statement that has the potential to have very determental effects on the market as you know it.
But do you know whether or not the parts that JimsCars is selling on eBay met all the safety standards that the parts are supposed to meet and that he didn't just buy the QC rejects from the company?
He just said they stop doing it. They just stop selling to one distributor. Seems much more efficient than stopping the whole program
I'm sure the companies are arguing (and perhaps not without merit) that first sale applies only to the end user or the consumer. If you purchase with intent to resell, that makes you a retailer or distributor and thus subject to different rules. There is some merit to this point of view. Consider that resellers, retailers and distributors are required by law to follow certain processes, laws and regulations. Among these are verious health regulations for the food industry.
Let's say that Evil Corp Foods sells their food product to Massive Grocery. Laws dictate that in order for Massive Grocery to leagaly sell ECF's product, it must be sold within 30 days of being recieved at an MG location. Day 29 arrives, MG marks down some of it's ECF stock to sell off and at least make some profit on. Joe Freedom buys it. It sits on his shelf for a few days, at which point he realizes he didn't really need it, but a friend does, so he sells it to his friend, at a hair more than he paid, but less than MG sells it for. So far so good, everyone wins.
But let's say that Joe Freedom's friend gets sick from the food product. Currently, it was a rotten thing for Joe Freedom to do to his friend, but not illegal and certainly (most likely) not intentional.
But let's now say that Joe Freedom is doing this every week. Buying the dicounted food product from MG and turning arround and selling it at a profit to people in his neighborhood and on craigslist. Now more people are getting sick. Not all of them, only some, but say it's still something like 10% or 20%. Shouldn't Joe Freedom be subject to the same health regulations that MG and ECF are? Don't you think that ECF might have an interest (and a valid one) in shutting Joe Freedom down since it's their product, money and their reputation on the line (even though they didn't sell it to the people that got sick)?
In a world where a company is responsible for the stupidity of people that buy their products, does it not suprise you that companies have a vested interest in tighly controling their supply line?
This is not as black and white as it seems at first glance, and certainly there is no easy answer, but just like any other freedom, first sale is not and can not be absolute.
Consider the other side of the coin though. If everyone knows everything about me at any time, then I can always prove that the identity theft that was comitted was actual theft, and not me just trying to get a free computer. Consider the recent rape case at duke. One student could almost completely prove they weren't there for the alleged rape based on a series of privacy invasions (taxi records, dorm records, ATM suvielence records and cell phone records). Without any of those records, it would have been a he said she said argument.