(a) Lawyers cannot chase ambulances. It violates our ethical rules in every jurisdiction to solicit business in that fashion. It's a myth, a cartoonish stereotype to criticize lawyers for the personal injury lawyers who do those equally cartoonish "Have you had a slip & fall?" commercials. Yes, there are lawyers that solicit the business indirectly - through advertisements - but no lawyers go to hospitals, etc.
(b) Why do you believe justice should be cheap? Medicine isn't cheap. Gas isn't cheap. Media isn't cheap. The only things that are cheap are things where supply comes close to outstripping demand, so the market forces won't allow higher prices. Until people educate themselves on the law sufficiently to reduce demand for lawyers, or they make changes to the law to make our roles unecessary, then market forces will demand we charge a high amount.
You sound like you got into a bad situation after some people mistreated you, and that's terrible. Why, exactly, should the lawyer bear the cost of your mistreatment? That's why you sue for damages, including fees. The rapidly rising trend in most jurisdictions is to allow recovery of fees to varying degrees, with many jurisdictions applying full fees in cases of malicious activities (like withdrawing on a real estate purchase). This is NOT legal advice, but in the future you should seek actual legal advice from a lawyer in person on this matter (fee recovery) if you're injured in such a fashion.
(c) Lawyers aren't screwing up the system: lawyers cannot do anything clients don't pay them to do. That's like saying doctors are screwing up the medical system: the responsibility lies in the people who pay lawyers to do things.
If you actually read the post, I note that rights are always different while committing a crime, while explicitly NOT stating that this definition makes it illegal to record police activity. Moreover, in the previous sentence, I state I don't believe it's broadly illegal, anyway.
How about you explain your points, with argument and reference to the law, instead of just blithely asserting them? Why is it dangerous, and more importantly, why is it erroneous? You cannot just assert that things are true without substantiation.
It doesn't matter who uses the technique first: if you acknowledge it as valid against them, then it's valid against you. If they acknowledge it's valid against you, then it's valid against them. Either both you and they get it, or neither of you do.
Frankly, I think both options are unpleasant, for different reasons.
The humor is that even your example is wrong, and you ironically used the important term: activities that are in the "plain sight" of an officer while he/she is in a legal physical position are not illegal searches/seizures. It's not that the Constitutional prohibition against illegal search/seizure is suspended in those situations, but rather that it is a LEGAL search/seizure.
I discuss this in a separate post in this thread (and won't retread it all here), but remember: as the technology to record video, to store that video, and more importantly to process that video to extract data (e.g. a cop's daily path, the informers he speaks with, etc.) gets more powerful, this question gets very difficult.
The government has a valid interest in preserving its ability to serve us, the populace. It may be - I'm not saying it IS - true that the government (state and federal) can legitimately prevent us from recording data (in this case, it's ONLY the audio actually) in the public space.
We can't just dismiss the possibility out of hand. We have to present considered, well-reasoned stances.
Can we stop making this idiotic assertion? Public servants are not employees of each citizen. How can you tell? Because you cannot fire them. They work for you, in the sense that they work for your benefit, but they do not work for you in the sense that they are in your employ.
I do not believe it is illegal to videotape police from a lawful position, while the police are engaged in police activity (if you're in an unlawful position - e.g. committing a crime - your rights are always different to some degree). It remains to be seen whether the courts agree with me.
However, if your argument is going to be "if they've got nothing to hide, they shouldn't mind", then you cannot complain when the police themselves turn that argument around on you. After all, if you've got nothing to hide, why should you mind them videotaping you whenever you're acting as a public citizen (i.e. whenever you're in the public space, or rather whenever you're not in private space)?
This is a serious question, and it's related to the Google Street View issue: our laws about privacy (and related issues) in the public space are based on old paradigms, and it is unclear whether we need to shift paradigms with the advent of sufficiently new technology.
If the cops are allowed to record all the activities that people engage in whilst in the public space, then how can we complain when they extrapolate our private activities from that data? (e.g. if they know where physically drive, then they know where you drove to, how long you stayed there, etc.).
Similarly, how much data are we allowed to collect on police? There are websites that exist today solely to encourage criminals to kill police informants and undercover cops. If it's legal to record their actions (especially in the public space), then we must find some other way to prevent these people from getting our cops/informants killed, right?
I'm not aware of a single jurisdiction in the USA that agrees with you. Moreover, I'm similarly not aware of any such laws in the UK or Australia. Can you provide a single example of a jurisdiction where a wall you erect on private property, facing the public way, is fair game for graffiti?
Is there a filter, so that people cant read the difference between "harm" and "crime"? I'm specifically, explicitly, only, talking about harm at this point. I've made no, none, nil, zero comments about whether all harms should be criminal, etc.
That's not at all what I asked: the original poster claimed that you couldn't harm someone with speech, and my point is that it is far more complicated than that. There are a variety of ways such as hiring hitmen to harm someone else, where speech does harm someone.
The decision to criminalize something comes after you make a determination of (a) why you criminalize anything, and (b) the moral structure of the actions in question. Since it was being denied that speech could contain {harms another} as a structural point, I was showing otherwise.
"Speech can not do physical harm, so speech can not be criminal, no matter how repulsive it is. The effect of the speech could be a physical reaction, but if that physical reaction is performed by a person other than the speech giver, the speech giver has not caused harm."
So only physical harm can be criminal? That's honestly your claim?
If I hire a hitman through a purely oral contract, you're claiming that I have done no harm to the target?
If I manipulate a listener, a la Iago and Othello, so that the listener is no longer aware of why or what he's doing, and then unleash the listener against some target, I have done no harm to the target?
You need to acknowledge the difference between speech that acts in the world, and speech that doesn't: some speech has direct, active qualities (e.g. the divulging of secrets) that identifies that speech (in a Leibniz-sense) with the direct harm of another person.
The problem is that you're obsessed with harm, without concern for rights: the violation of someone's rights by no means must be physical. Far from it, the gross majority of rights we possess are correlative with duties that have no physical component whatsoever. Frankly, I doubt very much you've actually read the philosophical and legal arguments for these concepts, since you're ignoring such direct and successful attacks on your perspective.
The thing everyone forgets is that monopoly isn't the problem: it's the abuse of monopoly to unfairly control a market.
XM and Sirius have so far both struggled for customers for several reasons, not the least of which being problems of customer awareness. Many people simply don't know - and won't learn without extensive research - which network would be better for them (in terms of content, quality and price). People are used to having one radio "network", expecting competitors to just be different channels. The idea of two separate networks with non-interoperable hardware just isn't what people want.
The question is how this new hybrid company (I love the AT&T joke...) will shape its new business model: if no other satellite companies emerge, will they offer channels 'for rent' to other content providers? Will they continue to own all channels? Etc.
Yeah, that's not what the word "search" means in a legal context. It is a well-defined term of art, and you cannot pretend that it is identical to the term in common parlance.
Per Amjur Searches (S) 16, "In General", the term "Search" under the 4th Amendment occurs only when there is some expectation of privacy that is deemed reasonable society, and it is infringed. (see e.g. Maryland v. Macon, 472 U.S. 463 (1985)). In the absence of such a reasonable expectation of privacy, there is no search (see e.g. Illinois v. Andreas, 463 U.S. 765 (1983)).
The whole point is that (a) there is no reasonable expectation of privacy covering your movements in public space, (b) because of this it isn't a search for the police to follow you in public space, and (c) this GPS tracker simply replaces that police officer who is physically tracking you.
I should have also commented on this line: "I'm thinking it's kind of like 'never say 'I'm sorry' at a traffic accident.'"
Good point, and I understand your confusion. The difference is very real, but perhaps subtle.
Suppose you're Nintendo. Now, undoubtedly you've tested the wrist-strap prior to releasing it for the simple reason that you want to avoid lawsuits besides your interests in releasing a popular, desireable product. Unfortunately, it appears that some people are treating it with excessive force, resulting in the accidents we've seen. If you release a better version of the wrist strap, you're not admitting you did anything wrong with the first strap, but rather saying that "Well, seeing how people are abusing the product, we've decided to make it harder for that abuse to cause a problem." In other words, it's a reaction to people's misuse of the Wii in a conscientious way. Nintendo is exceeding it's duty here.
Now, let's consider your car accident scenario. If you and I get in a car accident (ignore any question about which of us is at fault, objectively), one or both of us was at fault (in all but an exceedingly narrow type of situation). If we get out, and I say "sorry", I could be saying a lot of different things: I might be saying "I'm sorry I caused this," "I'm sorry this accident befell us both," "I'm sorry you caused this," etc. This ambiguity is the actual problem with saying "I'm sorry" at a car accident: it looks like it might be an admission of guilt.
Incidentally, the same evidence laws that protect Nintendo here also would protect you if you decided to pay my medical bills (but only those medical bills) if we were in that car accident. In other words, if you paid my medical bills (because you felt sorry for me) I couldn't bring that in as evidence in a trial (civil or criminal) to show that you were admitting guilt. The reasoning is the same: we don't want to discourage people from desireable behavior such as this.
This is not legal advice: it applies to both criminal and civil trials. The rationale is simple: if companies were creating evidence of defect every time they improved a product, they would simply never update products. Worse, they'd have an incentive to hide the existence of superior versions (e.g. safer implementations of coffee lids).
This is not legal advice: in the Federal Rules of Evidence, it is clearly stated that any attempt by a company to improve a product cannot and must not be admitted as evidence of a defect in the original design. Otherwise, products would never be improved (for fear of a resulting defect lawsuit).
All I could hear in my head as I read your post was "Do not taunt Happy-Fun Ball".
As a soon-to-be lawyer, and a current Wii owner, I'm disgusted by every person on the suing-side of this case. It's embarrassing in almost every way possible.
When I first watched the video (over a week ago, when the rest of the aggregator sites caught it), listening to the guy I couldn't fathom how it wasn't his fault. The entire video is him asking to be tazed more.
No doubt, there was probably no need to repeatedly shock him, but the first one seems pretty merited. The real problem here is that everyone assumes it's a "police brutality" thing, including many onlookers, because they felt/feel justified in making judgments without enough information.
Just to update your post a bit: there has been confirmation over at Engadget that the price-drop applies to Japan only. Moreover, the system is still coming with neither component nor HDMI cables. That adds a minimum of $20 to the purchase price, no matter which option you choose to hook up. Moreover, it's also been confirmed that the Japan games will be the equivalent of $90. There has been no confirmation as to the US price, but earlier interviews with Sony execs already indicated it would be $60+.
Slashdot Mirror
(a) Lawyers cannot chase ambulances. It violates our ethical rules in every jurisdiction to solicit business in that fashion. It's a myth, a cartoonish stereotype to criticize lawyers for the personal injury lawyers who do those equally cartoonish "Have you had a slip & fall?" commercials. Yes, there are lawyers that solicit the business indirectly - through advertisements - but no lawyers go to hospitals, etc.
(b) Why do you believe justice should be cheap? Medicine isn't cheap. Gas isn't cheap. Media isn't cheap. The only things that are cheap are things where supply comes close to outstripping demand, so the market forces won't allow higher prices. Until people educate themselves on the law sufficiently to reduce demand for lawyers, or they make changes to the law to make our roles unecessary, then market forces will demand we charge a high amount.
You sound like you got into a bad situation after some people mistreated you, and that's terrible. Why, exactly, should the lawyer bear the cost of your mistreatment? That's why you sue for damages, including fees. The rapidly rising trend in most jurisdictions is to allow recovery of fees to varying degrees, with many jurisdictions applying full fees in cases of malicious activities (like withdrawing on a real estate purchase). This is NOT legal advice, but in the future you should seek actual legal advice from a lawyer in person on this matter (fee recovery) if you're injured in such a fashion.
(c) Lawyers aren't screwing up the system: lawyers cannot do anything clients don't pay them to do. That's like saying doctors are screwing up the medical system: the responsibility lies in the people who pay lawyers to do things.
If you actually read the post, I note that rights are always different while committing a crime, while explicitly NOT stating that this definition makes it illegal to record police activity. Moreover, in the previous sentence, I state I don't believe it's broadly illegal, anyway.
How about you explain your points, with argument and reference to the law, instead of just blithely asserting them? Why is it dangerous, and more importantly, why is it erroneous? You cannot just assert that things are true without substantiation.
It doesn't matter who uses the technique first: if you acknowledge it as valid against them, then it's valid against you. If they acknowledge it's valid against you, then it's valid against them. Either both you and they get it, or neither of you do.
Frankly, I think both options are unpleasant, for different reasons.
The humor is that even your example is wrong, and you ironically used the important term: activities that are in the "plain sight" of an officer while he/she is in a legal physical position are not illegal searches/seizures. It's not that the Constitutional prohibition against illegal search/seizure is suspended in those situations, but rather that it is a LEGAL search/seizure.
I discuss this in a separate post in this thread (and won't retread it all here), but remember: as the technology to record video, to store that video, and more importantly to process that video to extract data (e.g. a cop's daily path, the informers he speaks with, etc.) gets more powerful, this question gets very difficult.
The government has a valid interest in preserving its ability to serve us, the populace. It may be - I'm not saying it IS - true that the government (state and federal) can legitimately prevent us from recording data (in this case, it's ONLY the audio actually) in the public space.
We can't just dismiss the possibility out of hand. We have to present considered, well-reasoned stances.
Can we stop making this idiotic assertion? Public servants are not employees of each citizen. How can you tell? Because you cannot fire them. They work for you, in the sense that they work for your benefit, but they do not work for you in the sense that they are in your employ.
Of course this argument works both ways.
I do not believe it is illegal to videotape police from a lawful position, while the police are engaged in police activity (if you're in an unlawful position - e.g. committing a crime - your rights are always different to some degree). It remains to be seen whether the courts agree with me.
However, if your argument is going to be "if they've got nothing to hide, they shouldn't mind", then you cannot complain when the police themselves turn that argument around on you. After all, if you've got nothing to hide, why should you mind them videotaping you whenever you're acting as a public citizen (i.e. whenever you're in the public space, or rather whenever you're not in private space)?
This is a serious question, and it's related to the Google Street View issue: our laws about privacy (and related issues) in the public space are based on old paradigms, and it is unclear whether we need to shift paradigms with the advent of sufficiently new technology.
If the cops are allowed to record all the activities that people engage in whilst in the public space, then how can we complain when they extrapolate our private activities from that data? (e.g. if they know where physically drive, then they know where you drove to, how long you stayed there, etc.).
Similarly, how much data are we allowed to collect on police? There are websites that exist today solely to encourage criminals to kill police informants and undercover cops. If it's legal to record their actions (especially in the public space), then we must find some other way to prevent these people from getting our cops/informants killed, right?
I'm not aware of a single jurisdiction in the USA that agrees with you. Moreover, I'm similarly not aware of any such laws in the UK or Australia. Can you provide a single example of a jurisdiction where a wall you erect on private property, facing the public way, is fair game for graffiti?
I believe it's supposed to mean "Phones throughout the state were all affected by a single cause: a cut cable in Peoria."
Is there a filter, so that people cant read the difference between "harm" and "crime"? I'm specifically, explicitly, only, talking about harm at this point. I've made no, none, nil, zero comments about whether all harms should be criminal, etc.
Read. Understand. THEN post...Jesus.
That's not at all what I asked: the original poster claimed that you couldn't harm someone with speech, and my point is that it is far more complicated than that. There are a variety of ways such as hiring hitmen to harm someone else, where speech does harm someone.
The decision to criminalize something comes after you make a determination of (a) why you criminalize anything, and (b) the moral structure of the actions in question. Since it was being denied that speech could contain {harms another} as a structural point, I was showing otherwise.
"Speech can not do physical harm, so speech can not be criminal, no matter how repulsive it is. The effect of the speech could be a physical reaction, but if that physical reaction is performed by a person other than the speech giver, the speech giver has not caused harm."
So only physical harm can be criminal? That's honestly your claim?
If I hire a hitman through a purely oral contract, you're claiming that I have done no harm to the target?
If I manipulate a listener, a la Iago and Othello, so that the listener is no longer aware of why or what he's doing, and then unleash the listener against some target, I have done no harm to the target?
You need to acknowledge the difference between speech that acts in the world, and speech that doesn't: some speech has direct, active qualities (e.g. the divulging of secrets) that identifies that speech (in a Leibniz-sense) with the direct harm of another person.
The problem is that you're obsessed with harm, without concern for rights: the violation of someone's rights by no means must be physical. Far from it, the gross majority of rights we possess are correlative with duties that have no physical component whatsoever. Frankly, I doubt very much you've actually read the philosophical and legal arguments for these concepts, since you're ignoring such direct and successful attacks on your perspective.
Fantastic post. Frankly, the thread should end right here.
The thing everyone forgets is that monopoly isn't the problem: it's the abuse of monopoly to unfairly control a market.
XM and Sirius have so far both struggled for customers for several reasons, not the least of which being problems of customer awareness. Many people simply don't know - and won't learn without extensive research - which network would be better for them (in terms of content, quality and price). People are used to having one radio "network", expecting competitors to just be different channels. The idea of two separate networks with non-interoperable hardware just isn't what people want.
The question is how this new hybrid company (I love the AT&T joke...) will shape its new business model: if no other satellite companies emerge, will they offer channels 'for rent' to other content providers? Will they continue to own all channels? Etc.
Yeah, that's not what the word "search" means in a legal context. It is a well-defined term of art, and you cannot pretend that it is identical to the term in common parlance.
Per Amjur Searches (S) 16, "In General", the term "Search" under the 4th Amendment occurs only when there is some expectation of privacy that is deemed reasonable society, and it is infringed. (see e.g. Maryland v. Macon, 472 U.S. 463 (1985)). In the absence of such a reasonable expectation of privacy, there is no search (see e.g. Illinois v. Andreas, 463 U.S. 765 (1983)).
The whole point is that (a) there is no reasonable expectation of privacy covering your movements in public space, (b) because of this it isn't a search for the police to follow you in public space, and (c) this GPS tracker simply replaces that police officer who is physically tracking you.
Right, 'cause there are no couples who want to be married but aren't permitted to do so due to unconstitutional laws.
coughgayscought
I should have also commented on this line: "I'm thinking it's kind of like 'never say 'I'm sorry' at a traffic accident.'"
Good point, and I understand your confusion. The difference is very real, but perhaps subtle.
Suppose you're Nintendo. Now, undoubtedly you've tested the wrist-strap prior to releasing it for the simple reason that you want to avoid lawsuits besides your interests in releasing a popular, desireable product. Unfortunately, it appears that some people are treating it with excessive force, resulting in the accidents we've seen. If you release a better version of the wrist strap, you're not admitting you did anything wrong with the first strap, but rather saying that "Well, seeing how people are abusing the product, we've decided to make it harder for that abuse to cause a problem." In other words, it's a reaction to people's misuse of the Wii in a conscientious way. Nintendo is exceeding it's duty here.
Now, let's consider your car accident scenario. If you and I get in a car accident (ignore any question about which of us is at fault, objectively), one or both of us was at fault (in all but an exceedingly narrow type of situation). If we get out, and I say "sorry", I could be saying a lot of different things: I might be saying "I'm sorry I caused this," "I'm sorry this accident befell us both," "I'm sorry you caused this," etc. This ambiguity is the actual problem with saying "I'm sorry" at a car accident: it looks like it might be an admission of guilt.
Incidentally, the same evidence laws that protect Nintendo here also would protect you if you decided to pay my medical bills (but only those medical bills) if we were in that car accident. In other words, if you paid my medical bills (because you felt sorry for me) I couldn't bring that in as evidence in a trial (civil or criminal) to show that you were admitting guilt. The reasoning is the same: we don't want to discourage people from desireable behavior such as this.
This is not legal advice: it applies to both criminal and civil trials. The rationale is simple: if companies were creating evidence of defect every time they improved a product, they would simply never update products. Worse, they'd have an incentive to hide the existence of superior versions (e.g. safer implementations of coffee lids).
This is not legal advice: in the Federal Rules of Evidence, it is clearly stated that any attempt by a company to improve a product cannot and must not be admitted as evidence of a defect in the original design. Otherwise, products would never be improved (for fear of a resulting defect lawsuit).
She put a hot cup of coffee without a secure lid between her thighs, and then drove away. She was defective, not the coffee.
I just explained this, but you're utterly and completely wrong.
In America, you cannot, whatsoever, hold up an improvement in a product as evidence of prior defect. Period. Full stop.
All I could hear in my head as I read your post was "Do not taunt Happy-Fun Ball". As a soon-to-be lawyer, and a current Wii owner, I'm disgusted by every person on the suing-side of this case. It's embarrassing in almost every way possible.
Are you talking about gas? Blind people drive?
When I first watched the video (over a week ago, when the rest of the aggregator sites caught it), listening to the guy I couldn't fathom how it wasn't his fault. The entire video is him asking to be tazed more. No doubt, there was probably no need to repeatedly shock him, but the first one seems pretty merited. The real problem here is that everyone assumes it's a "police brutality" thing, including many onlookers, because they felt/feel justified in making judgments without enough information.
Just to update your post a bit: there has been confirmation over at Engadget that the price-drop applies to Japan only. Moreover, the system is still coming with neither component nor HDMI cables. That adds a minimum of $20 to the purchase price, no matter which option you choose to hook up. Moreover, it's also been confirmed that the Japan games will be the equivalent of $90. There has been no confirmation as to the US price, but earlier interviews with Sony execs already indicated it would be $60+.