I'm tired of people using the levy as an excuse to download; it is not a free ticket to perform copyright infringement!
Well, what is it then? Obviously, it's not "free" - you're paying the levy. I can see how people could easily use the rationale of "well, I'm paying for something - I should get something for it", and proceed with downloading. I mean, what is the money supposed to be paying for?
Taxes (a levy is a tax) are typically used to support things like roads, police, health care (in some countries). There are a few roads that you drive where you are asked to pay a little more (toll roads, both government run and private), but they are not the norm. Typically we expect that if we are all compelled to pay for something then there is some personal or societal benefit to it. Taxes pay for schools for example, but not everyone paying those taxes have kids in school. Yet it's justified because having more people in society educated benefits everyone in that society. So what is the benefit of the music/copyright levy if you're not allowed to download? Maybe it benefits the copyright holders - but they are the ones *not* paying the tax. Is it like welfare? Well, welfare benefits society as a whole, since the indigent can eat and live without resorting to robbery and theft. But copyright holders are typically rich, not starving in the street.
Now, you could argue that the levy mitigates the loss of revenue due to illegal infringement. But all retailers have shoplifters and other criminals that cause losses. Sure the folks buying merchandise in the store are paying a little extra to make up for the shrinkage that the store incurs. But copyright holders have the same ability - to raise prices to cover any perceived losses. Why the levy on everyone? Why an extra tax on every consumer for a specific business, when other businesses subject to losses are not compensated?
The only conclusion possible is one of these:
The levy is in place so that citizens are provided with free digital content, or
The government is corrupt and officials have engaged in a quid-pro-quo with the entertainment industry to provide them with revenue that they have not earned.
I want to think that my government is doing The Right Thing, so... thanks for the downloads!
Courts don't recognize what might have happened. Your not getting a $100.00 payment from someone can't be parlayed into a $1,000,000.00 payment in court because you could have bought a hot stock with that $100.00 early on. You're stuck collecting what you would get plus any statutory damages.
Interesting. So you're saying that if some company, say, a record label, sues a person that potentially caused them loss of revenue by, for instance, posting their songs on the Internet, they would only get actual proven damages? Whew! That's a relief. Here I was afraid that they could walk into court and get a jury award for something like $200,000 by saying that a bunch of people *might* have downloaded the songs that otherwise *might* have actually paid for them.
Now if someone could do something about Verizon's port 80 (and 25?) blocks on their FIOS service, I might even have an actual choice for ISPs (even if it is only 2).
Well, looking at what you are talking about in that AUP, then either you cannot use e-mail at all, or there should be no problem running a mail program that receives, stores, and sends your own e-mail messages.
The reasonable clause in the section you quoted is "... that provide network content or any other services to anyone outside of your Premises LAN..." They give some examples, but it would only seem to preclude it if you are providing services or content to the public or non-residents.
If you interpret the clause any other way, you are basically prohibited from running email at all, since every email program receives, sends, and stores email.
There is also a prohibition against running "proxy servers", but the intent is *public access* proxy servers, not proxy servers that keep your kids from getting into porn sites, which a lot of people do.
Your interpretation of that AUP basically makes their service completely worthless.
This past week they blocked both inbound and outbound SMTP
Ouch, it looks like they've done it to me, too. I have 2 domains that point to my Comcast address, and now they are not getting mail. This really sucks. I got those emails, too, which I responded to with some pretty clear explanations as to why they must be mistaken, but I never got a response. I guess they just blocked me instead. My god they are bastards!
So how does the dyndns service work? It looks like an MX record should be able to do this - or can it only deal with pointing to addresses? I would switch to FIOS, but they block both port 25 and port 80.
This is getting really frustrating. Can't we get the FCC to do something about this?
Yes, I hate this kind of alarmist crap. Clueless boss reads this crap and all of a sudden there is a new policy that needs to be implemented right away.
The one I'm dealing with now was because some asshole like this one decided the big security threat nobody is paying attention to is flash drives. ** OH NOOOS -- DO SOMETHING ** So of course without even thinking about loss of productivity or how easy the workarounds are, we are mandated to disable all USB ports on every workstation. WTF?
Supposedly this provides better security. What it really means is that users will discover that their flash drives no longer work, so instead of carrying their work home in their pocket, they email it to themselves over the Internet.
If it's low traffic, blocking port 80 isn't a problem. Just set Apache (or IIS) to run on a different port. I use Verizon and run a web server on port 8080.
What URL? Ok, so I tell grandma "Yea, that's right, I know, just at the end, type colon eighty eighty. No, grandma, don't type colon, just the colon - it's shift-semi-colon. No, not Tiffany. Never mind, I'll send you an email...".
Of course, now I gotta figure out how to redirect all my email, too, because port 25 is also blocked, and webmaster@mydomain.org doesn't work, and neither do any of the other email addresses or postmaster or anything. It's kind of like have a black hole at your domain name.
"Just use a different port". No, that's a non-starter. I can't have a domain unless either broken or hosted somewhere else. What good is that?
Jeez, just how hardcore are you guys? I tend to d/l about 8 half-hour tv shows per week. Let's see, that's roughly 1.4gb. Just last week I d/l three game betas/demos, 1.4gb, 1.3gb, and 800mb. I'm up to about 5gb now in one week. And all throughout, I watched maybe a couple dozen tv shows courtesy of nbc.com, abc.com, and cbs.com but I don't know how much bandwidth that used. Oh, and the latest Ubuntu, though I haven't installed it yet. Plus all my teamspeak, ventrillo, and game traffic, plus my vonage, which the wife is on for several hours every other night. I'm guessing I topped out at about 6gb downloaded (maybe 1gb uploaded) just last week. Granted it was a banner week, but I bet I average about 1-3gb downloaded per week, with about half of that coming via BT.
Sounds like you are just doing a bunch of downloading, using your connection mainly for push-at-you content and VOIP. They will get around to trampling the VOIP that's not their own pretty soon, but it sounds like it's working ok for you right now. Your usage sounds kind of high, but before long Comcast will be approaching those television networks and other content providers with their hands out, looking for a little more money from them. Because basically you're what Comcast wants - a good consumer.
And yet! My service rocks?! I'm still waiting for the first shoe to drop but the couple of times I've had to call Comcast, my problem has been resolved to my satisfaction. My BT download speeds haven't really changed from what they were a year ago and I haven't noticed my ping go up or down in my favorite game servers.
Yes, it seems Comcast is fine with the downloads using BT. Apparently you didn't check to see if you are helping with contributing bandwidth (you do know that Ubuntu is supported solely through contributions from the community, don't you?) when you were running those BT downloads. You probably just waited for the download to finish, then closed BT right away. If you had left it up for a while, you would have noticed that the peers trying to connect with you to share those files were sent barely a trickle of data, and then got bumped off. That's what Comcast is doing to BT now.
What are you guys doing different from me that are experiencing problems so I can maybe avoid the same? You know, like lessons learned?
We are participating, sharing, and contributing. But Comcast is interfering with us. They don't want us to have a voice. They just want us to sit back and take what they're sending.
The download went very fast, but I notice I wasn't seeding very may users, and the few that were had 5Kb speeds....
Yep - that sounds like *exactly* the symptoms I started getting on bittorrents when Comcast started doing this. Used to be a download would take an hour or 2, then I could let it run for 4-8 hours and I have uploaded as much as I downloaded. The downloads now really aren't any slower, but I can leave it running for *days* and transfer maybe 100 to 150 MBs. There are never more than 2 peers, and they never stay very long - maybe enough time to send a packet or 2.
I would switch to FIOS, but Verizon blocks port 80, and it's really convenient to run web servers from home. Mine have very little traffic - so little that it seems wasteful to spend money to host them somewhere else. If I want to share some pictures or files with friends or family, I can just copy them to the server and add a link. Isn't that what the Internet is for?
Apparently, the ISPs don't think so. They think it just dynamic television. Companies are broadcasters and consumers are, well, consumers. You have to sign up for a $100 business account with Verizon to run a web server. But I'm not a business - I just want to use the Internet for... Interneting.
When I sent my complaint to the FCC about this, they sent me an auto-response. It started with "Dear Consumer"...
That's what I keep asking. About the only thing that works at all right now is Youtube (I don't have Apple TV, but I have been thinking about getting a video dock of some kind for the iPod). So how do I watch Youtube? My Nintendo Wii. It's simple, plays cool games that even the chicks like, easy wireless connectivity, and it's got a decent browser (although I don't use it much except for stuff like watching video). Pretty cheap device, too. Unfortunately, there's not much that works right now other than Youtube.
So the way to make a decent device that will work with pretty much any service is pretty simple. Just make it work on any browser (or at least the big 3) on any platform. Sure, even Flash requires a plugin, but it's an open spec so anybody can write one. We don't need a special device, just a plugin that will run anywhere, or can be ported anywhere.
At least two jurors, one of them a funeral home owner, wanted to award the Recording Industry Association of America the maximum $150,000 for each of the 24 copyright violations, while one juror held out hours for the $750 minimum for each violation of the Copyright Act, he said.
There's a $750 minimum?? WTF? Where did that come from? Is that for anything? It seems pretty lucrative.
Ok, this post is copyright me.
Now I just wait until somebody copies it without my permission. That's a minimum $750 bucks, dude! Hand it over.
Still $222 THOUSAND dollars is outrageous for such a simple act. If Capital could prove that it hurt them for $222 thousand dollars it would be correct...
Exactly.
Normally in any civil case, in order to be awarded damages, you must prove harm. There was no discussion of it in this case - the RIAA went in with the huge advantage of assumed harm. WTF?!?!?
If I lost both legs because the RIAA cut them off because I was protesting in front of their headquarters, and I sued them for damages, I would never have such an advantage. Since I sit in a chair all day to earn a living, the judge would only award me enough to pay my medical bills, and my wages while I was in the hospital. I could cry "but they cut my legs off!! They should be punished!" all I want to, but in most states, the judge would just be like, "Ok, show me your bills and your pay stubs, and you'll get that much.".
And in other Bizarro World news a new study finds that reducing the number of traffic laws helps reduce accidents caused by red tape, this conclusion being based on the same evidence as presented for our previous story. None, with a slight mix of reality denial.
You may be denying reality a bit yourself, there.
More accidents occur at heavily regulated intersections than those with stop signs, even 4-way stops. Make people more responsible for keeping order and they don't fall back on excuses to drive badly.
Check out especially the "shared space" concept, which removes all traffic signs and lights entirely, and has been proven to work.
I love how everyone at the law office is a computer expert. People make the most sweeping judgments about complex software issues based on a pejorative three sentence description.
For example, from a recent incident at a law office:
They wrote it as a 10-user application, but adding another 500 seems workable
Hmm, yes. And the technical basis as to why expecting 50-fold scalability is 'workable' is...?
I'm not saying this is a baseless assumption. But it's funny how everyone around the law office (99% lawyers of some flavour or other) is able to deduce why it's 'plainly' technically correct or incorrect to throw whatever combination of the cheapest hardware and software available into the office and assume everything is going to do exactly what they want.
IAASE. Newsflash: systems development work is hard. Software Engineers get paid a lot partly because technical issues are often very complex and challenging. You cannot determine whether something is 'workable' or not based on 4 minutes of absent-minded evaluation.
Lawyers tend to be very difficult to work with. They tell everyone to be sure to hire a "professional" for every little legal matter under the sun, feel it's perfectly OK to charge exorbitant fees for every little thing, but think *never* need any help with their computer systems. When they do finally decide to seek advice, they hmmm and haw and ask stupid question after stupid question and then complain when they're told it's going to cost more than 50 bucks to fix everything.
WTF are you responding to? How did I imply that I am "bent out of shape". Are you saying you agree they should enforce their TOS against some groups, but not against others? Sounds kind of duplicitous. But then you seem to think that's exactly the right way to handle it.
You are correct. I note that a number of phone company shills that have tried to discredit your statement, so I will respond here instead of trying to correct each one.
While it's true that it was not tax dollars that directly went to telecommunications companies, it was still taxpayers that paid the money. The telecoms made promises to invest hugely in infrastructure in return for rules that resulted in huge profit increases. They did not honor those commitments, but pocketed the money instead. They are now in fact threatening again not to build any more infrastructure unless they can get more favorable regulations.
I'm not sure why the shills keep repeating the "it's cheaper overseas due to higher population density". That has been discredited over and over again. I'll repeat the numbers here for completeness:
Country - Broadband Penetration - Population Density
Iceland 26.7 3.0
Korea 25.4 483.0
Netherlands 25.3 399.0
Denmark 25.0 125.0
Switzerland 23.1 179.0
Finland 22.5 15.0
Norway 21.9 14.0
Canada 21.0 3.0
Sweden 20.3 20.0
Belgium 18.3 341.0
Japan 17.6 338.0
United States 16.8 31.0
No correlation. Do not listen to the telecom shills.
It's gone now, Allowing your users to say what they want is overrated anyway.
At least if enough other users complain about it. I guess somebody else will have to start a new petition to get the "f**k Christianity" group taken down.
Too bad about all the legitimate voters caught up in this. If the Dems hadn't been going around registering mental patients, vagabonds, illegal aliens, and dead people, maybe the Repubs wouldn't have felt the need to formulate the challenges.
Except that it is now a routine (although still illegal) tactic to send letters addressed to the voter, and if it gets returned, that voter is struck from the registrations rolls. They have been doing this to the homeless, blacks, hispanics, and Native Americans for the last several elections. The BBC watches our own elections more closely than we do. They have documented all of this.
I get the homeless are unlikely to get a letter addressed to a homeless shelter, but I didn't know that the post office would return letters to a voter if it turned out they were black, hispanic, or Native Americans... Do they have some kind of stamp they use that says something like "Return to sender: addressee is black" ??
And make sure those pesky homeless don't try to vote.
Why would we want to even *allow* the homeless to vote? They are not participating in governing in any other way. They don't pay taxes, they are not acting as civil servants. They don't even attend meetings at the neighborhood watch. Maybe if we could at least get them to attend the local AA meetings we could eventually get them to vote based on the real issues facing their communities (other than keeping the soup kitchens open with somebody else's tax dollars).
I'm guessing that the only people interested in making sure these people vote are the ones that are sure they can get them to vote "the right way". That's because all the real stakeholders in government would rather not have some bureaucrat telling them how to run their business, and taking 70% of their profits to pay for other bureaucrats who make up more rules!
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Well, what is it then? Obviously, it's not "free" - you're paying the levy. I can see how people could easily use the rationale of "well, I'm paying for something - I should get something for it", and proceed with downloading. I mean, what is the money supposed to be paying for?
Taxes (a levy is a tax) are typically used to support things like roads, police, health care (in some countries). There are a few roads that you drive where you are asked to pay a little more (toll roads, both government run and private), but they are not the norm. Typically we expect that if we are all compelled to pay for something then there is some personal or societal benefit to it. Taxes pay for schools for example, but not everyone paying those taxes have kids in school. Yet it's justified because having more people in society educated benefits everyone in that society. So what is the benefit of the music/copyright levy if you're not allowed to download? Maybe it benefits the copyright holders - but they are the ones *not* paying the tax. Is it like welfare? Well, welfare benefits society as a whole, since the indigent can eat and live without resorting to robbery and theft. But copyright holders are typically rich, not starving in the street.
Now, you could argue that the levy mitigates the loss of revenue due to illegal infringement. But all retailers have shoplifters and other criminals that cause losses. Sure the folks buying merchandise in the store are paying a little extra to make up for the shrinkage that the store incurs. But copyright holders have the same ability - to raise prices to cover any perceived losses. Why the levy on everyone? Why an extra tax on every consumer for a specific business, when other businesses subject to losses are not compensated?
The only conclusion possible is one of these:
- The levy is in place so that citizens are provided with free digital content, or
- The government is corrupt and officials have engaged in a quid-pro-quo with the entertainment industry to provide them with revenue that they have not earned.
I want to think that my government is doing The Right Thing, soInteresting. So you're saying that if some company, say, a record label, sues a person that potentially caused them loss of revenue by, for instance, posting their songs on the Internet, they would only get actual proven damages? Whew! That's a relief. Here I was afraid that they could walk into court and get a jury award for something like $200,000 by saying that a bunch of people *might* have downloaded the songs that otherwise *might* have actually paid for them.
Thanks for straightening me out.
Now if someone could do something about Verizon's port 80 (and 25?) blocks on their FIOS service, I might even have an actual choice for ISPs (even if it is only 2).
The reasonable clause in the section you quoted is "... that provide network content or any other services to anyone outside of your Premises LAN..." They give some examples, but it would only seem to preclude it if you are providing services or content to the public or non-residents.
If you interpret the clause any other way, you are basically prohibited from running email at all, since every email program receives, sends, and stores email.
There is also a prohibition against running "proxy servers", but the intent is *public access* proxy servers, not proxy servers that keep your kids from getting into porn sites, which a lot of people do.
Your interpretation of that AUP basically makes their service completely worthless.
Ouch, it looks like they've done it to me, too. I have 2 domains that point to my Comcast address, and now they are not getting mail. This really sucks. I got those emails, too, which I responded to with some pretty clear explanations as to why they must be mistaken, but I never got a response. I guess they just blocked me instead. My god they are bastards!
So how does the dyndns service work? It looks like an MX record should be able to do this - or can it only deal with pointing to addresses? I would switch to FIOS, but they block both port 25 and port 80.
This is getting really frustrating. Can't we get the FCC to do something about this?
The one I'm dealing with now was because some asshole like this one decided the big security threat nobody is paying attention to is flash drives. ** OH NOOOS -- DO SOMETHING ** So of course without even thinking about loss of productivity or how easy the workarounds are, we are mandated to disable all USB ports on every workstation. WTF?
Supposedly this provides better security. What it really means is that users will discover that their flash drives no longer work, so instead of carrying their work home in their pocket, they email it to themselves over the Internet.
Stop this madness!
What URL? Ok, so I tell grandma "Yea, that's right, I know, just at the end, type colon eighty eighty. No, grandma, don't type colon, just the colon - it's shift-semi-colon. No, not Tiffany. Never mind, I'll send you an email...".
Of course, now I gotta figure out how to redirect all my email, too, because port 25 is also blocked, and webmaster@mydomain.org doesn't work, and neither do any of the other email addresses or postmaster or anything. It's kind of like have a black hole at your domain name.
"Just use a different port". No, that's a non-starter. I can't have a domain unless either broken or hosted somewhere else. What good is that?
Sounds like you are just doing a bunch of downloading, using your connection mainly for push-at-you content and VOIP. They will get around to trampling the VOIP that's not their own pretty soon, but it sounds like it's working ok for you right now. Your usage sounds kind of high, but before long Comcast will be approaching those television networks and other content providers with their hands out, looking for a little more money from them. Because basically you're what Comcast wants - a good consumer.
Yes, it seems Comcast is fine with the downloads using BT. Apparently you didn't check to see if you are helping with contributing bandwidth (you do know that Ubuntu is supported solely through contributions from the community, don't you?) when you were running those BT downloads. You probably just waited for the download to finish, then closed BT right away. If you had left it up for a while, you would have noticed that the peers trying to connect with you to share those files were sent barely a trickle of data, and then got bumped off. That's what Comcast is doing to BT now.
We are participating, sharing, and contributing. But Comcast is interfering with us. They don't want us to have a voice. They just want us to sit back and take what they're sending.
I have tried that, but it doesn't stop Comcast's mucking with it. They are blocking it whether encrypted or not.
Yep - that sounds like *exactly* the symptoms I started getting on bittorrents when Comcast started doing this. Used to be a download would take an hour or 2, then I could let it run for 4-8 hours and I have uploaded as much as I downloaded. The downloads now really aren't any slower, but I can leave it running for *days* and transfer maybe 100 to 150 MBs. There are never more than 2 peers, and they never stay very long - maybe enough time to send a packet or 2.
I would switch to FIOS, but Verizon blocks port 80, and it's really convenient to run web servers from home. Mine have very little traffic - so little that it seems wasteful to spend money to host them somewhere else. If I want to share some pictures or files with friends or family, I can just copy them to the server and add a link. Isn't that what the Internet is for?
Apparently, the ISPs don't think so. They think it just dynamic television. Companies are broadcasters and consumers are, well, consumers. You have to sign up for a $100 business account with Verizon to run a web server. But I'm not a business - I just want to use the Internet for ... Interneting.
When I sent my complaint to the FCC about this, they sent me an auto-response. It started with "Dear Consumer" ...
That's what I keep asking. About the only thing that works at all right now is Youtube (I don't have Apple TV, but I have been thinking about getting a video dock of some kind for the iPod). So how do I watch Youtube? My Nintendo Wii. It's simple, plays cool games that even the chicks like, easy wireless connectivity, and it's got a decent browser (although I don't use it much except for stuff like watching video). Pretty cheap device, too. Unfortunately, there's not much that works right now other than Youtube.
So the way to make a decent device that will work with pretty much any service is pretty simple. Just make it work on any browser (or at least the big 3) on any platform. Sure, even Flash requires a plugin, but it's an open spec so anybody can write one. We don't need a special device, just a plugin that will run anywhere, or can be ported anywhere.
There's a $750 minimum?? WTF? Where did that come from? Is that for anything? It seems pretty lucrative.
Ok, this post is copyright me.
Now I just wait until somebody copies it without my permission. That's a minimum $750 bucks, dude! Hand it over.
Exactly.
Normally in any civil case, in order to be awarded damages, you must prove harm. There was no discussion of it in this case - the RIAA went in with the huge advantage of assumed harm. WTF?!?!?
If I lost both legs because the RIAA cut them off because I was protesting in front of their headquarters, and I sued them for damages, I would never have such an advantage. Since I sit in a chair all day to earn a living, the judge would only award me enough to pay my medical bills, and my wages while I was in the hospital. I could cry "but they cut my legs off!! They should be punished!" all I want to, but in most states, the judge would just be like, "Ok, show me your bills and your pay stubs, and you'll get that much.".
Where is the justice???
You may be denying reality a bit yourself, there.
More accidents occur at heavily regulated intersections than those with stop signs, even 4-way stops. Make people more responsible for keeping order and they don't fall back on excuses to drive badly.
Check out especially the "shared space" concept, which removes all traffic signs and lights entirely, and has been proven to work.
Wholesale Solar
For example, from a recent incident at a law office:
They wrote it as a 10-user application, but adding another 500 seems workableHmm, yes. And the technical basis as to why expecting 50-fold scalability is 'workable' is...?
I'm not saying this is a baseless assumption. But it's funny how everyone around the law office (99% lawyers of some flavour or other) is able to deduce why it's 'plainly' technically correct or incorrect to throw whatever combination of the cheapest hardware and software available into the office and assume everything is going to do exactly what they want.
IAASE. Newsflash: systems development work is hard. Software Engineers get paid a lot partly because technical issues are often very complex and challenging. You cannot determine whether something is 'workable' or not based on 4 minutes of absent-minded evaluation.
Lawyers tend to be very difficult to work with. They tell everyone to be sure to hire a "professional" for every little legal matter under the sun, feel it's perfectly OK to charge exorbitant fees for every little thing, but think *never* need any help with their computer systems. When they do finally decide to seek advice, they hmmm and haw and ask stupid question after stupid question and then complain when they're told it's going to cost more than 50 bucks to fix everything.
Ok, Mr. Cruise, why don't you enlighten us?
WTF are you responding to? How did I imply that I am "bent out of shape". Are you saying you agree they should enforce their TOS against some groups, but not against others? Sounds kind of duplicitous. But then you seem to think that's exactly the right way to handle it.
While it's true that it was not tax dollars that directly went to telecommunications companies, it was still taxpayers that paid the money. The telecoms made promises to invest hugely in infrastructure in return for rules that resulted in huge profit increases. They did not honor those commitments, but pocketed the money instead. They are now in fact threatening again not to build any more infrastructure unless they can get more favorable regulations.
I'm not sure why the shills keep repeating the "it's cheaper overseas due to higher population density". That has been discredited over and over again. I'll repeat the numbers here for completeness:
Country - Broadband Penetration - Population Density
Iceland 26.7 3.0
Korea 25.4 483.0
Netherlands 25.3 399.0
Denmark 25.0 125.0
Switzerland 23.1 179.0
Finland 22.5 15.0
Norway 21.9 14.0
Canada 21.0 3.0
Sweden 20.3 20.0
Belgium 18.3 341.0
Japan 17.6 338.0
United States 16.8 31.0
No correlation. Do not listen to the telecom shills.
At least if enough other users complain about it. I guess somebody else will have to start a new petition to get the "f**k Christianity" group taken down.
Oh yeah? Then Explain THIS GUY
Umm... He's fictional??
I am Spanish, and possibly Italian, you insensitive clod!
Too bad about all the legitimate voters caught up in this. If the Dems hadn't been going around registering mental patients, vagabonds, illegal aliens, and dead people, maybe the Repubs wouldn't have felt the need to formulate the challenges.
I get the homeless are unlikely to get a letter addressed to a homeless shelter, but I didn't know that the post office would return letters to a voter if it turned out they were black, hispanic, or Native Americans... Do they have some kind of stamp they use that says something like "Return to sender: addressee is black" ??
Why would we want to even *allow* the homeless to vote? They are not participating in governing in any other way. They don't pay taxes, they are not acting as civil servants. They don't even attend meetings at the neighborhood watch. Maybe if we could at least get them to attend the local AA meetings we could eventually get them to vote based on the real issues facing their communities (other than keeping the soup kitchens open with somebody else's tax dollars).
I'm guessing that the only people interested in making sure these people vote are the ones that are sure they can get them to vote "the right way". That's because all the real stakeholders in government would rather not have some bureaucrat telling them how to run their business, and taking 70% of their profits to pay for other bureaucrats who make up more rules!