Instead of listening to random blogs, listen to someone who actually lives there.
I don't know what book list is right or not. I don't even care. Maybe she stopped orders (which happen before the book is released), maybe that list floating around is wrong. Either way, it's pretty clear that she did want to ban books until it became clear that she would suffer for it politically. I'd personally be willing to lessen the charge from "book banning" to "attempted book banning", but that won't give me a reason to vote for her.
I think the evidence indicates that she's a skilled politician in terms of avoiding responsibility for her actions, who is very nice in public, but who has daggers waiting for the backs of anyone who crosses her.
> She 'stood up' to the big oil interests and made them give her government a piece of the action.
Actually, it goes further than that. That money goes into the Alaska Permanent Fund, which is like welfare for the entire state of Alaska. She managed to increase that by $500 (with Alaska taking in $1.87 for every dollar it paid in Federal taxes).
So she not only took millions of dollars from everyone not in Alaska to give away as part of a government welfare program, she increased our gas prices to help do it by taking money from the oil companies to spend on welfare checks!
Some "libertarian"! She took money from the other 49 states to bribe the people of Alaska for their votes! No wonder she had such a high approval rating...
We've had 9 Presidents leave office (4 assassinations, 4 natural deaths, 1 abdicated) out of 43 people. That's over a 20% chance just to begin with.
Actuarial tables give McCain a 1 in 3 chance of dying in the next 8 years, though I don't believe that adjusted for things like the treatment he received as a POW or all the plane crashes he survived, both in training and the time he was shot down.
McCain's thousands pages of medical records didn't get much scrutiny, either. They gave a few friendly journalists a few hours to go over them. I don't know about you, but 100 pages/hour is a pretty good clip for me reading a story, let alone medical records. There's no way they could have read them all, so we just don't know.
It was ironic that Karl Rove attacked Obama over the mere idea that he might choose an inexperienced VP for "political" reasons. There's a great table about Rove contradicting himself here, as well as a link to the video.
Read this if you want to understand her management style. I would never work for a boss like her.
And if you have read any of the many books about problems in the Bush administration, you'll know that this paranoia over loyalty is one of the things that has made Bush such a terrible president. Bush hires cronies instead of people who know what they're doing, which is how we got to "Heck of a job, Brownie!"
At least there, you can make a stark contrast with Obama. His campaign has had the least internal drama of anyone and all the reports about how he manages people say that he does exceptionally well, as you can read here.
I don't know about anyone else, but I want a leader who doesn't think serving the community doesn't count as experience, but telling people "it's my way or the highway" does.
> Selling the government jet on eBay, is my idea of libertarianism.
She didn't sell it on eBay (that deal fell through). She had to sell it privately.
> Able to hold an opinion but not use the state to force those opinions on others, is my idea of libertarianism.
She'll fire anyone who disagrees with her, though. The bad cop probably deserved it (though I'm not sure she should use her office like that). The police chief might have deserved it if he had a history of protecting bad cops. But did the librarian deserve it? Did all the other people she stabbed in the back deserve it?
We get focused on the cases that grab headlines, but she has a history of being nasty when there are no cameras around.
> I am curious how you make out Obama to be the stronger libertarian candidate, or frankly even Barr.
I'm not the other guy, but I just want to make it clear that I'm not going to argue that Obama is libertarian. He isn't. I do think that there's some hope of him lessening executive power. He was a constitutional scholar; he has to have some appreciation for it. He also indicated that he might prosecute Bush administration officials who acted unconstitutionally.
There's no way in hell McCain could do that, even if he wanted to.
> I just cannot support his level of fiscal irresponsibility and government extension.
Then you might want to look into what Palin did in Alaska. She spent freely, taxed regressively, and took as much money as she could get from the federal government (i.e. everyone NOT in Alaska). That's why they loved her, after all. They got an extra $500/person, because they didn't have to spend their own money. Though she had sense enough to pretend that she hadn't when it became a political issue, that just proves she's politically crafty. Nobody denies that she's good at politics.
> I can see where you'd be confused because Bush himself has been rather expansionist with government. What I am talking about supporting here is candidates that are opposite of Bush in that way.
She's not. She's just like Bush in that way. She's just better at pretending not to be. She calls herself "libertarian" but that's just to get people who don't know her to vote for her. Once you get past the fluff, you'll find that she's been highly irresponsible.
A true libertarian should be writing in Ron Paul in this election.
> How many people on Slashdot (who are more knowledgeable than the average citizen) can name their state senators?
Kyl & McCain. And the latter has been replaced with some kind of doppleganger in the past 3 years.
I've _always_ supported for McCain in the past. But no more. Three years ago, when he decided to run for President, he changed completely.
He used to be a no-nonsense guy. He'd shoot the breeze with the press and take on any questions they wanted to give him. Now, he's become a fake. He started sucking up to Bush like nobody's business, and that's when this "vote with Bush 90%+ of the time" thing happened. He wasn't always like that, but right now, I have no idea what he really stands for.
He's opposing his own immigration bill. His own. He's become a "defender of sexism" after being the guy who loved the joke, "Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because Janet Reno is her father!" The Republican hypocrisy on experience & sexism right now is sickening. Watch the Daily Show clip if you haven't.
Every other issue is similarly confused. He hated the Bush tax cuts, now he loves them. NOBODY can tell you what he stands for right now, because it's an election year. Will he revert to who he was? Will he stay as he is now? Will he adopt some hybrid set of positions? Who knows? You'd do better to roll a die (or consult a poll...) if you want to know what he actually stands for right now. I can't tell you how HUGE a change that is.
This guy used to hate phony politicians. Now he's become one. He's hired Rove's protege AND the Bush adviser who put out the ugly rumors about McCain fathering a black child (that child was adopted). So much for family being "off limits" or his plan to run a "clean" campaign. Yeah, nobody with any sense thought it was ever going to *actually* be clean. But there's dirty and then there's hiring Rove's people.
I can't vote for McCain. He violated everything he once claimed to believe in for a shot at becoming President. I know someone will say "they all do that," but when I look at how far he's fallen, I know that he can't get up ever again.
She supported the Bridge to Nowhere, coming out against it only after Alaska was asked to pay for more of it.
She got a tiny town with no debt $20 million into the hole, during a time of record surplus! And this after taking $27 million in federal earmarks for that tiny town (before becoming Governor and getting even more). John McCain called earmarks sought by her "pork" back before he tried to claim she was a "reformer."
The librarian and the police chief are the least of it. She's the kind of person to fire anyone she doesn't like. And when she's done with someone, she's done. She's even nastier than shown in that speech.
She presides over the Ultimate Welfare State. Alaska has a fund that it distributes to residents. They love Palin because it went up by about $500 under her. Never mind that it takes in $1.87 for every dollar it's taxed. So Alaska is spending everyone else's money.
She ran Sen. Ted "The Internet is not a big truck" Stevens' PAC. She hired a lobbyist to get those earmarks.
She's a skilled politician and if you think she's some kind of "libertarian" you've been duped. She's another borrow & spend Republican, just like Bush.
But can you find us a politician who isn't? At least we know that Obama also listens to Lessig.
McCain, on the other hand, is pro-censorware, anti-Net Neutrality and pro-copyright. And he listens to Carly Fiorina for both technology and economic advice.
Don't get me wrong. I'm NOT excusing this. I don't like this from either party. But of the two, Obama is the only one who even cares a little about copyright reform, and that counts for something. The FISA vote was just to keep the Republicans from claiming he supports terrorists. I still hate it, but he has a point.
This is law. Even words that are almost the same get differentiated into having legal meanings.
I once watched a law class where they discussed the difference between void and voidable contracts.
For those wondering, a contract that is void has no legal effect. One that is voidable could be voided (but no one has opted to void it yet).
Two people could choose to complete the contract anyhow, of course, in either case. I believe that one example of a void contract would be murder for hire: you simply can't contract for a felony like that (and you certainly wouldn't go to court to enforce it). A voidable contract would be one made with a minor (with some exceptions). They could always request that it be voided for whatever reason (perhaps they were taken advantage of).
The only exception in the case of minors was that they can contract for "essentials" (for example, housing). This was to protect the rights of emancipated minors on the theory that they wouldn't be able to rent a place if no one would do business with them when all contracts with them were voidable, and therefore could be made void whenever they wanted.
Of course, that lesson was a long time ago. So if you need legal advice about void and voidable contracts, go get a lawyer, because there's a lot more to contracts than just that:)
The real question in my mind is whether this allows for FTL communication, or whether nature conspires against that once again?
I believe it's Bell's inequality that prevents information from traveling faster than light. But each of these channels does NOT transmit information, if the paper is to be believed.
So, does that mean they could somehow be used with entangled photons or whatever to transmit information faster than light?
I'm no lawyer, but I know a little about law anyhow. Mr. Patry is one of the heavyweight scholars of copyright law, not some random nobody on Slashdot like me.
His blog was very important. Like TFS says, it broke the news on the ACTA treaty, which would still be secret if not for him. Lawyers read his books to learn about copyright law. His blog was incredibly useful to find out all the latest happenings in copyright law, which is only getting crazier now that it's being rewritten to appease Disney and to try to deal with the internet, which most politicians don't understand on a deeper level than "it's not a big truck, it's a series of tubes."
So losing him is a big deal and it sucks. There simply aren't many people who could ever hope to replace him. Groklaw, Ars Technica and NYCL are all great, don't get me wrong.
But they simply lack the authority someone like Mr. Patry can bring to the table. He will be missed.
Umm, no, the FSF, EFF & co. are trying for the Orphan Works Act!
And besides, if you DO find someone using your work, you get paid for it. If you never know that someone is using your work, why do you even care?
The whole point of the Orphan Works Act is that you CAN'T usually figure out who to pay, so you can't use their work at all! It's not something Gates dreamed up. That said, the BS about capitalism after he's worked to form that monopoly of his is ridiculous. But don't hate the orphans because of him!
If the member companies start to get hit with flack and angry customers for their participation, they may reevaluate it (i.e. stop funding the bastards).
Without industry support, the BSA would dry up for lack of money.
I don't think that congress can do much except not listen to them. And it's hard for them to avoid listening to anyone who has money.
So I really think that bad PR for the member companies is the only way to reduce the member list.
This is why we need to get rid of the DHS and TSA. Because our liberty will never be safe until they're gone. There will always be some nebulous "threat" that they need to "protect" us from with ridiculous, half-baked, counter-productive methods.
If the Republicans wanted to win any measure of popular support back, they'd impeach Bush themselves and ax both departments for being wastes of money.
1) I use Firefox + Noscript & Flashblock, never IE. I've been to plenty of dodgy websites, but I don't let them run scripts and there haven't been any 0-days that could get through this combination. That said, it *IS* a pain to temporarily allow scripts all the time (permanent allow is _rare_ for me).
2) I disabled autoplay ages ago.
3) I don't open the crap family & friends send to me. They're all jokes and crap, anyhow. And yes, I use OO.o anyhow, so Office based macro exploits are unlikely to work.
In other words, the only virus I ever had was that one I downloaded deliberately to examine. I still run AV anyhow, but I haven't really needed it. A better argument would be that the rest of the family occasionally uses this computer and they might need it. But even then...
I'm afraid that one course wasn't so... electronic, nor was it part of my major. In fact, we didn't discuss copyright law or the RIAA at all (it was taken before all that). Heck, I should be glad to remember anything given how long ago I took it...
I learned plenty about how the appeals process works, though! Most of the class was focused on how a case could get shuffled around the court system, if there were some hypothetical case in state court that was appealed to the state court of appeals, then the state supreme court. Or maybe it was removed to federal court, went through the federal appeals court and then to the Supreme Court.
Or maybe it was one of those rare types of cases listed in the Constitution where the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction because it had to do with a treaty or something.
And of course, there are all the special courts, like divorce court, or patent courts or tax courts and that.
So it won't be too useful vs. the RIAA unless they actually appeal cases instead of fleeing from them:)
Well, okay, I guess I know that the federal courts have original jurisdiction over copyright claims, so you can't sue for those in state court. And I know a little bit about how you decide if someone has enough contacts with a state to be sued there (though cases over things done online seem nearly to offer the plaintiff their choice of venue under some current case law I've seen!).
And I guess I know the difference between a ruling being vacated and reversed...
This means I'm overqualified to play lawyer on Slashdot, though, right? I think I need more +5, Funnys for that...:-)
> You shouldn't do stuff that is WRONG. You should however apply your own head to the problem of right and wrong, and not let your morals be dictated by whomever wrote the laws of your country.
I think you have that backwards. You're starting with the people instead of the law. Of course people should follow the law. The part that's wrong is that lawmakers should make reasonable and just laws.
When they start making unreasonable, unenforceable, for-profit laws that do not benefit the people, the lawmakers are no longer doing their job and should be removed.
At this point in time, I wish that the people had a veto (perhaps an even stronger one than the president's). How many laws would get shot down then?
Slashdot Mirror
It's not just Palin, McCain himself is avoiding the media these days.
McCain is my senator. He used to hate phonies. He used to shoot the breeze with reporters all the time and he'd almost never dodge a question.
To win this election, he has become one of the phonies he once hated.
Instead of listening to random blogs, listen to someone who actually lives there.
I don't know what book list is right or not. I don't even care. Maybe she stopped orders (which happen before the book is released), maybe that list floating around is wrong. Either way, it's pretty clear that she did want to ban books until it became clear that she would suffer for it politically. I'd personally be willing to lessen the charge from "book banning" to "attempted book banning", but that won't give me a reason to vote for her.
I think the evidence indicates that she's a skilled politician in terms of avoiding responsibility for her actions, who is very nice in public, but who has daggers waiting for the backs of anyone who crosses her.
> She 'stood up' to the big oil interests and made them give her government a piece of the action.
Actually, it goes further than that. That money goes into the Alaska Permanent Fund, which is like welfare for the entire state of Alaska. She managed to increase that by $500 (with Alaska taking in $1.87 for every dollar it paid in Federal taxes).
So she not only took millions of dollars from everyone not in Alaska to give away as part of a government welfare program, she increased our gas prices to help do it by taking money from the oil companies to spend on welfare checks!
Some "libertarian"! She took money from the other 49 states to bribe the people of Alaska for their votes! No wonder she had such a high approval rating...
We've had 9 Presidents leave office (4 assassinations, 4 natural deaths, 1 abdicated) out of 43 people. That's over a 20% chance just to begin with.
Actuarial tables give McCain a 1 in 3 chance of dying in the next 8 years, though I don't believe that adjusted for things like the treatment he received as a POW or all the plane crashes he survived, both in training and the time he was shot down.
McCain's thousands pages of medical records didn't get much scrutiny, either. They gave a few friendly journalists a few hours to go over them. I don't know about you, but 100 pages/hour is a pretty good clip for me reading a story, let alone medical records. There's no way they could have read them all, so we just don't know.
It was ironic that Karl Rove attacked Obama over the mere idea that he might choose an inexperienced VP for "political" reasons. There's a great table about Rove contradicting himself here, as well as a link to the video.
Read this if you want to understand her management style. I would never work for a boss like her.
And if you have read any of the many books about problems in the Bush administration, you'll know that this paranoia over loyalty is one of the things that has made Bush such a terrible president. Bush hires cronies instead of people who know what they're doing, which is how we got to "Heck of a job, Brownie!"
At least there, you can make a stark contrast with Obama. His campaign has had the least internal drama of anyone and all the reports about how he manages people say that he does exceptionally well, as you can read here.
I don't know about anyone else, but I want a leader who doesn't think serving the community doesn't count as experience, but telling people "it's my way or the highway" does.
> Selling the government jet on eBay, is my idea of libertarianism.
She didn't sell it on eBay (that deal fell through). She had to sell it privately.
> Able to hold an opinion but not use the state to force those opinions on others, is my idea of libertarianism.
She'll fire anyone who disagrees with her, though. The bad cop probably deserved it (though I'm not sure she should use her office like that). The police chief might have deserved it if he had a history of protecting bad cops. But did the librarian deserve it? Did all the other people she stabbed in the back deserve it?
We get focused on the cases that grab headlines, but she has a history of being nasty when there are no cameras around.
> I am curious how you make out Obama to be the stronger libertarian candidate, or frankly even Barr.
I'm not the other guy, but I just want to make it clear that I'm not going to argue that Obama is libertarian. He isn't. I do think that there's some hope of him lessening executive power. He was a constitutional scholar; he has to have some appreciation for it. He also indicated that he might prosecute Bush administration officials who acted unconstitutionally.
There's no way in hell McCain could do that, even if he wanted to.
> I just cannot support his level of fiscal irresponsibility and government extension.
Then you might want to look into what Palin did in Alaska. She spent freely, taxed regressively, and took as much money as she could get from the federal government (i.e. everyone NOT in Alaska). That's why they loved her, after all. They got an extra $500/person, because they didn't have to spend their own money. Though she had sense enough to pretend that she hadn't when it became a political issue, that just proves she's politically crafty. Nobody denies that she's good at politics.
> I can see where you'd be confused because Bush himself has been rather expansionist with government. What I am talking about supporting here is candidates that are opposite of Bush in that way.
She's not. She's just like Bush in that way. She's just better at pretending not to be. She calls herself "libertarian" but that's just to get people who don't know her to vote for her. Once you get past the fluff, you'll find that she's been highly irresponsible.
A true libertarian should be writing in Ron Paul in this election.
> How many people on Slashdot (who are more knowledgeable than the average citizen) can name their state senators?
Kyl & McCain. And the latter has been replaced with some kind of doppleganger in the past 3 years.
I've _always_ supported for McCain in the past. But no more. Three years ago, when he decided to run for President, he changed completely.
He used to be a no-nonsense guy. He'd shoot the breeze with the press and take on any questions they wanted to give him. Now, he's become a fake. He started sucking up to Bush like nobody's business, and that's when this "vote with Bush 90%+ of the time" thing happened. He wasn't always like that, but right now, I have no idea what he really stands for.
He's opposing his own immigration bill. His own. He's become a "defender of sexism" after being the guy who loved the joke, "Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because Janet Reno is her father!" The Republican hypocrisy on experience & sexism right now is sickening. Watch the Daily Show clip if you haven't.
Every other issue is similarly confused. He hated the Bush tax cuts, now he loves them. NOBODY can tell you what he stands for right now, because it's an election year. Will he revert to who he was? Will he stay as he is now? Will he adopt some hybrid set of positions? Who knows? You'd do better to roll a die (or consult a poll...) if you want to know what he actually stands for right now. I can't tell you how HUGE a change that is.
This guy used to hate phony politicians. Now he's become one. He's hired Rove's protege AND the Bush adviser who put out the ugly rumors about McCain fathering a black child (that child was adopted). So much for family being "off limits" or his plan to run a "clean" campaign. Yeah, nobody with any sense thought it was ever going to *actually* be clean. But there's dirty and then there's hiring Rove's people.
I can't vote for McCain. He violated everything he once claimed to believe in for a shot at becoming President. I know someone will say "they all do that," but when I look at how far he's fallen, I know that he can't get up ever again.
Then you've been duped by a woman you don't even know.
She supported the Bridge to Nowhere, coming out against it only after Alaska was asked to pay for more of it.
She got a tiny town with no debt $20 million into the hole, during a time of record surplus! And this after taking $27 million in federal earmarks for that tiny town (before becoming Governor and getting even more). John McCain called earmarks sought by her "pork" back before he tried to claim she was a "reformer."
The librarian and the police chief are the least of it. She's the kind of person to fire anyone she doesn't like. And when she's done with someone, she's done. She's even nastier than shown in that speech.
She presides over the Ultimate Welfare State. Alaska has a fund that it distributes to residents. They love Palin because it went up by about $500 under her. Never mind that it takes in $1.87 for every dollar it's taxed. So Alaska is spending everyone else's money.
She ran Sen. Ted "The Internet is not a big truck" Stevens' PAC. She hired a lobbyist to get those earmarks.
She's a skilled politician and if you think she's some kind of "libertarian" you've been duped. She's another borrow & spend Republican, just like Bush.
> You are going to wait quite a while for your plug-in hybrid.
Nah, you can make your own adapter. Of course, it may take some fancy electronics and a lot of time to get it charged up via mini USB...
But can you find us a politician who isn't? At least we know that Obama also listens to Lessig.
McCain, on the other hand, is pro-censorware, anti-Net Neutrality and pro-copyright. And he listens to Carly Fiorina for both technology and economic advice.
Don't get me wrong. I'm NOT excusing this. I don't like this from either party. But of the two, Obama is the only one who even cares a little about copyright reform, and that counts for something. The FISA vote was just to keep the Republicans from claiming he supports terrorists. I still hate it, but he has a point.
Dammit. And here I was hoping we could elect BHM...
Although, I guess BHO is only one letter off. Or two, depending on your metric.
This is law. Even words that are almost the same get differentiated into having legal meanings.
I once watched a law class where they discussed the difference between void and voidable contracts.
For those wondering, a contract that is void has no legal effect. One that is voidable could be voided (but no one has opted to void it yet).
Two people could choose to complete the contract anyhow, of course, in either case. I believe that one example of a void contract would be murder for hire: you simply can't contract for a felony like that (and you certainly wouldn't go to court to enforce it). A voidable contract would be one made with a minor (with some exceptions). They could always request that it be voided for whatever reason (perhaps they were taken advantage of).
The only exception in the case of minors was that they can contract for "essentials" (for example, housing). This was to protect the rights of emancipated minors on the theory that they wouldn't be able to rent a place if no one would do business with them when all contracts with them were voidable, and therefore could be made void whenever they wanted.
Of course, that lesson was a long time ago. So if you need legal advice about void and voidable contracts, go get a lawyer, because there's a lot more to contracts than just that :)
> P.S. Go fuck yourself
God bless you.
The real question in my mind is whether this allows for FTL communication, or whether nature conspires against that once again?
I believe it's Bell's inequality that prevents information from traveling faster than light. But each of these channels does NOT transmit information, if the paper is to be believed.
So, does that mean they could somehow be used with entangled photons or whatever to transmit information faster than light?
I'm no lawyer, but I know a little about law anyhow. Mr. Patry is one of the heavyweight scholars of copyright law, not some random nobody on Slashdot like me.
His blog was very important. Like TFS says, it broke the news on the ACTA treaty, which would still be secret if not for him. Lawyers read his books to learn about copyright law. His blog was incredibly useful to find out all the latest happenings in copyright law, which is only getting crazier now that it's being rewritten to appease Disney and to try to deal with the internet, which most politicians don't understand on a deeper level than "it's not a big truck, it's a series of tubes."
So losing him is a big deal and it sucks. There simply aren't many people who could ever hope to replace him. Groklaw, Ars Technica and NYCL are all great, don't get me wrong.
But they simply lack the authority someone like Mr. Patry can bring to the table. He will be missed.
Umm, no, the FSF, EFF & co. are trying for the Orphan Works Act!
And besides, if you DO find someone using your work, you get paid for it. If you never know that someone is using your work, why do you even care?
The whole point of the Orphan Works Act is that you CAN'T usually figure out who to pay, so you can't use their work at all! It's not something Gates dreamed up. That said, the BS about capitalism after he's worked to form that monopoly of his is ridiculous. But don't hate the orphans because of him!
> Do that to Cuil and you get a penis.
El Reg has a story about that, too, for a different search. It seems like they've managed to index more gay porn than anything else.
If the member companies start to get hit with flack and angry customers for their participation, they may reevaluate it (i.e. stop funding the bastards).
Without industry support, the BSA would dry up for lack of money.
I don't think that congress can do much except not listen to them. And it's hard for them to avoid listening to anyone who has money.
So I really think that bad PR for the member companies is the only way to reduce the member list.
> So TSA's main job now is justifying their job.
This is why we need to get rid of the DHS and TSA. Because our liberty will never be safe until they're gone. There will always be some nebulous "threat" that they need to "protect" us from with ridiculous, half-baked, counter-productive methods.
If the Republicans wanted to win any measure of popular support back, they'd impeach Bush themselves and ax both departments for being wastes of money.
1) I use Firefox + Noscript & Flashblock, never IE. I've been to plenty of dodgy websites, but I don't let them run scripts and there haven't been any 0-days that could get through this combination. That said, it *IS* a pain to temporarily allow scripts all the time (permanent allow is _rare_ for me).
2) I disabled autoplay ages ago.
3) I don't open the crap family & friends send to me. They're all jokes and crap, anyhow. And yes, I use OO.o anyhow, so Office based macro exploits are unlikely to work.
In other words, the only virus I ever had was that one I downloaded deliberately to examine. I still run AV anyhow, but I haven't really needed it. A better argument would be that the rest of the family occasionally uses this computer and they might need it. But even then...
Actually, I thought that at least one of the Gitmo inmates was an American citizen arrested inside America.
Though I could be mistaken. He might not have been held at Gitmo, just thrown in a hole somewhere without charges.
Note to self: click "post anonymously" next time.
I'm afraid that one course wasn't so... electronic, nor was it part of my major. In fact, we didn't discuss copyright law or the RIAA at all (it was taken before all that). Heck, I should be glad to remember anything given how long ago I took it...
:)
:-)
I learned plenty about how the appeals process works, though! Most of the class was focused on how a case could get shuffled around the court system, if there were some hypothetical case in state court that was appealed to the state court of appeals, then the state supreme court. Or maybe it was removed to federal court, went through the federal appeals court and then to the Supreme Court.
Or maybe it was one of those rare types of cases listed in the Constitution where the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction because it had to do with a treaty or something.
And of course, there are all the special courts, like divorce court, or patent courts or tax courts and that.
So it won't be too useful vs. the RIAA unless they actually appeal cases instead of fleeing from them
Well, okay, I guess I know that the federal courts have original jurisdiction over copyright claims, so you can't sue for those in state court. And I know a little bit about how you decide if someone has enough contacts with a state to be sued there (though cases over things done online seem nearly to offer the plaintiff their choice of venue under some current case law I've seen!).
And I guess I know the difference between a ruling being vacated and reversed...
This means I'm overqualified to play lawyer on Slashdot, though, right? I think I need more +5, Funnys for that...
- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property
Pffft. Everyone knows you should use metaphasic shielding.
> You shouldn't do stuff that is WRONG. You should however apply your own head to the problem of right and wrong, and not let your morals be dictated by whomever wrote the laws of your country.
I think you have that backwards. You're starting with the people instead of the law. Of course people should follow the law. The part that's wrong is that lawmakers should make reasonable and just laws.
When they start making unreasonable, unenforceable, for-profit laws that do not benefit the people, the lawmakers are no longer doing their job and should be removed.
At this point in time, I wish that the people had a veto (perhaps an even stronger one than the president's). How many laws would get shot down then?