Ok, but that doesn't answer my question of how did this raid earn the RIAA a profit? I don't care about the ongoing criminal enterprise part (the trade of counterfeit CDs and DVDs), just the profit part. If the RIAA violates a law, then they should be punished (and I do believe they are guilty of intentionally giving the impression that the 'agents' were legal law enforcement).
Well, I can't know for certain that they were illegal any more than the RIAA. Which is why they should have contacted the local police to report the suspected crime. I was just contesting the use of the term racketeering.
Of course I would feel threatened. But unless they actually threaten my life by either saying they're going to kill me or brandish a lethal weapon then I don't think there is legal grounds for deadly force. I'm just saying there has to be a tangible threat of loss of life before deadly return force is acceptable. I'm not myself a cop or a member of any of the armed forces. I just feel that if I were the percieved aggressor, I would want to know that the person who feels threatens wouldn't be allowed to attack my life unless I attacked theirs first, so I hold myself to that same standard.
First of all, you can't give someone the right to "wave the gun around" without giving them the right to shoot it. This is a practical matter: as soon as a gun is drawn, all bets are off because life is at risk unless the person without the gun is totally submissive, and far away to begin with.
As far as public vs. private property, I don't really see how that matters. If you're being mugged on public property, you can still shoot the guy if you think it may save your life. The only indicator is that it is more likely that someone is coming to kill you if they actually trespass, and so deadly force is more easily justified. It's certainly not required, however.
I only said you could wave the gun around if they trespass on your property. I only mentioned trespassing because it definitely has a 'line in the sand' feel to it which seems to escalate the intent of the offender.
The point is that they have _no_ right to confiscate _anything_. Regardless of whether these are illigal or not they have no right to do anything other than call their lawyers or the cops. If they do anything else it is criminal.
I didn't mean to say they were in the right to confiscate it. I was merely contesting the use of the term racketeering. I've always considered racketeering to be intimidating people into paying you money. Typically by 'selling' a service necessitated by the actions of the people 'selling' the service.
Still, it would make for some interesting want ads... "Do you want a fast-paced exciting job with great benefits? Do you not object to daily probing of your rectum? Have we got a job for you!!!" (I think they already have ads like this in Nevada...)
Indeed they do have such ads, I believe they're produced by the Velvet Jones Ad Agency.
I don't disagree that this tactic is questionable at best, but I fail to see how this is racketeering or relevant to RICO. The subpoenas without lawsuits to offer offenders a chance to settle I can see as racketeering. But this is confiscating illegal tangible goods, not coercing money. Regarding RICO, how exaclty does one of these raids turn a profit?
I could just see a bunch of thugs in RIAA jackets walking up to a street vendor, start harassing him, only to watch the vendor pull out a couple of 9mm's and blow them all away...
That would be murder. If they trespass on private property in order to harass said vendor (most parking lot attendants have huts right up at the sidewalk, so in this particular trespassing should not be assumed), then the vendor could certainly wave the gun around to coerce them to leave. But the vendor shouldn't be allowed to open fire unless his/her life was threatened first.
Willfully killing someone when they are not endangering your life is murder.
i agree you should be able to protect your property, but I don't think that means license to kill for any transgression, as you suggest. If someone breaks into your house at night, and you have reasonable belief that your life is in dnager, by all means shoot them. If they walk 10 feet from the sidewalk to your call and steal it in broad daylight, you know what they look like and what direction they were headed. You can also beat them with a bat, or something else. Deadly force only in response deadly threat seems reasonable to me.
Re:Besides Debian, What distros have 2.6.x ?
on
Kernel 2.6.1 Released
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· Score: 2, Informative
I mean, what sort of self-respecting distro ships without any sort of video-playing software in this day and age, and expects you to spend hours in dependency hell cobbling together mplayer or whatever?
You're a tard or a troll. RH did not stop shipping media players, they stopped shipping prebuilt modules for codecs with patented algorithms. And dependency hell is years gone. There are plenty of third party repositories like fedora.us, livna.org, and the venerable freshrpms.net which support both apt and yum. And the up2date client supports not only RHN servers but apt and yum servers too.
If you reduce her salary to $500,000 (ten times what a sacrificing $50K engineer might make), you can save 2290 well paying (50K) jobs.
Perhaps I'm just dense, but how do you get 2,290 people earning $50K with $500K? $500K split between 2,290 people is just under $220. Seems to me you can only get 10. And that's only if the company isn't offering any benefits or doing tax withholding.
I'm playing DA here with an argument that my soon-to-be lawyer friend used.
The 4th ammendment isn't being violated here because the information in question isn't "yours". It belongs to the financial institution. Since it is accessable to a subset of that financial institution, it weakens any argument that the information is yours since it's available to a number of people besides yourself.
Let me know what holes to poke in that argument.
The information is mine because it is only about me and it is not public. The employees of the institution retaining the information about me are under legal restrictions about what they can do with that information, which to me means the information is not theirs.
I think a better response would be to ask him what he thinks has changed about the nature of the information, it's storage, and the criminal investigations that this information should no longer be protected by the 4th amendment. I mean, a judge had to be convinced that the information was relevant to the criminal investigation of an individual before this law was passed. What changed? The fear of terrorism. But this bill doesn't limit the power to terrorist investigations, so what is the purpose of changing the status of the information in regards to the 4th amendment?
What is his reason for asking citizens "why not" when they don't want to grant law enforcement more power rather than asking the law enforcement agency "why" when they ask for more power?
If you sue and lose, you pay for the defense. If you sue and win, you win your court awarded damages. If you are sued, and win, the plaintif pays your fees. If you are sued and lose, you pay the damages ordered by the court.
Besides, I would fell more encouraged to defend myself when I know I'm in the right. A high profile law firm would also be more inclined to take on such a case, as they know the plaintiff will have to pay their fees. The lawyers wouldn't have to worry about the little guy defendent being able to pay the tab.
Louis Black highlighted the differences between Democrats and Republicnas best when he said "A Democrat sucks, a Republican blows. A democrat won't let me keep my money, but a Republican won't let me spend it on drugs and hookers, so what am I supposed to do with it?"
In my opinion, GTK/GNOME is _less_ free because of the LGPL. The GPL was created so that the freedom goes where the software does, and it's not true with the LGPL.
The great irony of UserLinux in this respect is that LGPL gives more freedom to the producer than the consumer (the User). The LGPL gives software producers freedom to use libraries in conjunction with a closed-source application and the GPL does not. The extra freedoms of the LGPL are realised by the companies writing software for UserLinux, not the people using it. This is what Bruce Perens has in mind. He wants to produce a distribution that encourages companies to release software.
Whether he believes you or not, the whole process has already cost you a load of time and money. Either way, the RIAA still wins.
If the RIAA fails to prove in any modest sense that you were disitrubting infringing content, you would be able to recoup your financial loss. You might have to counter-sue but I think the time would be worth it.
whilst.rpms (supposedly, not sure here) need the RPM tools.
While I realise this is late, RPM files are just compressed cpio archives. It has been a few years, but when I was making custom RH CDs (you can probably check siglinux archives circa '97 to see me offering them) I was just using plain cpio tools to repacakge things.
If she cannot properly handle the coffee she has no business ordering it.
If I sell you a ladder, thinking that you have the sense to use it properly, but you go home and violate every common sense safety rule in using it and injure youself, would it be fair for you to blame me?
not on the surface. But if you made the rungs of the ladder to weak to support even the average weight of an adult, continuing to do so despite being sued over 700 times over it in the past, and refused to even consider paying my medical bills, then I would think it fair.
Someone actually pointed out a reference which stated the car wasn't even moving, she was adjusting the lid, on a flimsy paper or styrofoam cup. Besides, have you ever hit a pothole you didn't see and spilled something? Accidents happen.
She asked for $20,000 for medical bills. She sued them to make them acknowledge and offered to settle. The jurors were so repulsed by the extent of the burn damagage they apparently took it upon themselves to preach to the friends/family to never drink hot/warm fuild in the car. The jury awarded over $2 million. The appellate judge reduced it to just under $500,000 because "hey, don't spill hot coffee on yourself."
Why do people have such a difficult time accepting that even though it's common sense to not spill on yourself, it should be even more common sense to not serve food so hot it could put you in the hospital for over a week (8 days in her case), hence the ruling of the jury, upheld by an appellate judge.
No, it was necessary (the customers prefer it this way), and not dangerous
Wrong. They knowingly kept there coffee as much as 20 degrees higher than other restaurants. On average 185 degrees, at which temperature third degree burns take as little as 2 seconds.
Millions of cups drank, no problem
Wrong again. McDonalds had been sued successfully over 700 times prior to her suit. I don't give a shit about what percentage of customers that is, after 5 people getting third degree burns it's time to rethink your policy.
just like you can get burns from pouring hot coffee on your 'nads.
She was over 80 years old at the time of the incident. Maybe you could cut her a little slack for spilling her drink. I'm assuming that you've done so at some time in your life too.
The problem with these frivolous suits is that Person A is made to pay for the actions/guilt of Person B.
That's true, but I think given an accurate view of the facts, this one hardly counts as frivolous.
She only asked for coverage of her medical bills. In fact, she only sued because they ignored her request that they cover her bills, and the jury awarded her a grandiose settlement to drive home the point that McDonalds needs to wisen up. The judge, on appeal, lowered the settlement to less than half a million.
I agree with your 'poor me' sentiment, but there was much more to the lawsuits than your acknowledging. First off, the tobacco companies added addictive chemicals and targetd children. They also obstructed reports of the health hazards for as long as they could. And it hasn't always been common sense that smoking is bad for your health. Especially before all the extra chemicals were added to get people hooked on it. I could be wrong, but I don't think the lawsuits were like civil suits by individuals, or even class-action suits. The settlements went to the respective states. Minnesota used the money to set up extra facilities to help people quit smoking.
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Ok, but that doesn't answer my question of how did this raid earn the RIAA a profit? I don't care about the ongoing criminal enterprise part (the trade of counterfeit CDs and DVDs), just the profit part. If the RIAA violates a law, then they should be punished (and I do believe they are guilty of intentionally giving the impression that the 'agents' were legal law enforcement).
Well, I can't know for certain that they were illegal any more than the RIAA. Which is why they should have contacted the local police to report the suspected crime. I was just contesting the use of the term racketeering.
see here
Of course I would feel threatened. But unless they actually threaten my life by either saying they're going to kill me or brandish a lethal weapon then I don't think there is legal grounds for deadly force. I'm just saying there has to be a tangible threat of loss of life before deadly return force is acceptable. I'm not myself a cop or a member of any of the armed forces. I just feel that if I were the percieved aggressor, I would want to know that the person who feels threatens wouldn't be allowed to attack my life unless I attacked theirs first, so I hold myself to that same standard.
As far as public vs. private property, I don't really see how that matters. If you're being mugged on public property, you can still shoot the guy if you think it may save your life. The only indicator is that it is more likely that someone is coming to kill you if they actually trespass, and so deadly force is more easily justified. It's certainly not required, however.
I only said you could wave the gun around if they trespass on your property. I only mentioned trespassing because it definitely has a 'line in the sand' feel to it which seems to escalate the intent of the offender.
I didn't mean to say they were in the right to confiscate it. I was merely contesting the use of the term racketeering. I've always considered racketeering to be intimidating people into paying you money. Typically by 'selling' a service necessitated by the actions of the people 'selling' the service.
Indeed they do have such ads, I believe they're produced by the Velvet Jones Ad Agency.
I don't disagree that this tactic is questionable at best, but I fail to see how this is racketeering or relevant to RICO. The subpoenas without lawsuits to offer offenders a chance to settle I can see as racketeering. But this is confiscating illegal tangible goods, not coercing money. Regarding RICO, how exaclty does one of these raids turn a profit?
That would be murder. If they trespass on private property in order to harass said vendor (most parking lot attendants have huts right up at the sidewalk, so in this particular trespassing should not be assumed), then the vendor could certainly wave the gun around to coerce them to leave. But the vendor shouldn't be allowed to open fire unless his/her life was threatened first. Willfully killing someone when they are not endangering your life is murder.
i agree you should be able to protect your property, but I don't think that means license to kill for any transgression, as you suggest. If someone breaks into your house at night, and you have reasonable belief that your life is in dnager, by all means shoot them. If they walk 10 feet from the sidewalk to your call and steal it in broad daylight, you know what they look like and what direction they were headed. You can also beat them with a bat, or something else. Deadly force only in response deadly threat seems reasonable to me.
You're a tard or a troll. RH did not stop shipping media players, they stopped shipping prebuilt modules for codecs with patented algorithms. And dependency hell is years gone. There are plenty of third party repositories like fedora.us, livna.org, and the venerable freshrpms.net which support both apt and yum. And the up2date client supports not only RHN servers but apt and yum servers too.
To my knowledge, nobody has built a functioning Crushinator yet.
Ah, I misread it as reduce her salary by $500k. My mistake.
Perhaps I'm just dense, but how do you get 2,290 people earning $50K with $500K? $500K split between 2,290 people is just under $220. Seems to me you can only get 10. And that's only if the company isn't offering any benefits or doing tax withholding.
The information is mine because it is only about me and it is not public. The employees of the institution retaining the information about me are under legal restrictions about what they can do with that information, which to me means the information is not theirs.
I think a better response would be to ask him what he thinks has changed about the nature of the information, it's storage, and the criminal investigations that this information should no longer be protected by the 4th amendment. I mean, a judge had to be convinced that the information was relevant to the criminal investigation of an individual before this law was passed. What changed? The fear of terrorism. But this bill doesn't limit the power to terrorist investigations, so what is the purpose of changing the status of the information in regards to the 4th amendment?
What is his reason for asking citizens "why not" when they don't want to grant law enforcement more power rather than asking the law enforcement agency "why" when they ask for more power?
Loki, there's no such thing as Windows Power Users. They're make-believe like gnomes, elves, and eskimos.
</homer voice>
If you sue and lose, you pay for the defense. If you sue and win, you win your court awarded damages. If you are sued, and win, the plaintif pays your fees. If you are sued and lose, you pay the damages ordered by the court.
Besides, I would fell more encouraged to defend myself when I know I'm in the right. A high profile law firm would also be more inclined to take on such a case, as they know the plaintiff will have to pay their fees. The lawyers wouldn't have to worry about the little guy defendent being able to pay the tab.
Louis Black highlighted the differences between Democrats and Republicnas best when he said "A Democrat sucks, a Republican blows. A democrat won't let me keep my money, but a Republican won't let me spend it on drugs and hookers, so what am I supposed to do with it?"
The great irony of UserLinux in this respect is that LGPL gives more freedom to the producer than the consumer (the User). The LGPL gives software producers freedom to use libraries in conjunction with a closed-source application and the GPL does not. The extra freedoms of the LGPL are realised by the companies writing software for UserLinux, not the people using it. This is what Bruce Perens has in mind. He wants to produce a distribution that encourages companies to release software.
If the RIAA fails to prove in any modest sense that you were disitrubting infringing content, you would be able to recoup your financial loss. You might have to counter-sue but I think the time would be worth it.
While I realise this is late, RPM files are just compressed cpio archives. It has been a few years, but when I was making custom RH CDs (you can probably check siglinux archives circa '97 to see me offering them) I was just using plain cpio tools to repacakge things.
not on the surface. But if you made the rungs of the ladder to weak to support even the average weight of an adult, continuing to do so despite being sued over 700 times over it in the past, and refused to even consider paying my medical bills, then I would think it fair.
Someone actually pointed out a reference which stated the car wasn't even moving, she was adjusting the lid, on a flimsy paper or styrofoam cup. Besides, have you ever hit a pothole you didn't see and spilled something? Accidents happen.
She asked for $20,000 for medical bills. She sued them to make them acknowledge and offered to settle. The jurors were so repulsed by the extent of the burn damagage they apparently took it upon themselves to preach to the friends/family to never drink hot/warm fuild in the car. The jury awarded over $2 million. The appellate judge reduced it to just under $500,000 because "hey, don't spill hot coffee on yourself."
Why do people have such a difficult time accepting that even though it's common sense to not spill on yourself, it should be even more common sense to not serve food so hot it could put you in the hospital for over a week (8 days in her case), hence the ruling of the jury, upheld by an appellate judge.
Driving away from the drive-through window.
No, it was necessary (the customers prefer it this way), and not dangerous
Wrong. They knowingly kept there coffee as much as 20 degrees higher than other restaurants. On average 185 degrees, at which temperature third degree burns take as little as 2 seconds.
Millions of cups drank, no problem
Wrong again. McDonalds had been sued successfully over 700 times prior to her suit. I don't give a shit about what percentage of customers that is, after 5 people getting third degree burns it's time to rethink your policy.
just like you can get burns from pouring hot coffee on your 'nads.
She was over 80 years old at the time of the incident. Maybe you could cut her a little slack for spilling her drink. I'm assuming that you've done so at some time in your life too.
The problem with these frivolous suits is that Person A is made to pay for the actions/guilt of Person B.
That's true, but I think given an accurate view of the facts, this one hardly counts as frivolous. She only asked for coverage of her medical bills. In fact, she only sued because they ignored her request that they cover her bills, and the jury awarded her a grandiose settlement to drive home the point that McDonalds needs to wisen up. The judge, on appeal, lowered the settlement to less than half a million.
Here's the list of hits on google.
I agree with your 'poor me' sentiment, but there was much more to the lawsuits than your acknowledging. First off, the tobacco companies added addictive chemicals and targetd children. They also obstructed reports of the health hazards for as long as they could. And it hasn't always been common sense that smoking is bad for your health. Especially before all the extra chemicals were added to get people hooked on it. I could be wrong, but I don't think the lawsuits were like civil suits by individuals, or even class-action suits. The settlements went to the respective states. Minnesota used the money to set up extra facilities to help people quit smoking.