And some older computer users still hit the "l" when they mean "1" to this day on their computers for exactly that reason.
That substitution, which is now generally thought of as a typo, is a dead giveaway to the age of the typist when you see it made.
Re:Do not pass go, do not collect $200
on
Dow vs. Parody
·
· Score: 2
Basically what has happened here is that it is illegal to point out that a company is killing people.
No, it's illegal to pretend represent a company you're not a part of, even if that company is one that is killing people.
The Yes Men could have written a site as themselves in which they talk about what Dow has done. However, since Dow's misdeads pale in comparision to the misdeads of other wrongdoers (such as the government of Iraq for one example) so that it'd be hard for them to get media attention when they have to compete on the same playing field as those stories.
Instead, they're trying to jump to the top by impersonating the website of Dow, which breaks several copyright and trademark laws in the process. Yeah, that gets them attention, but it does so by doing something illegal.
By the way, Rosa Parks went to jail for a time for doing what she did. If you're going to do civil disobedience, paying for your crime is part of the deal.
I don't get it. Dow dumps chemicals, they get sued by the people they've harmed. Those people turn around and dump contaminated soil on Dow, and they shouldn't be sued?
Sorry, being poor doesn't mean you get to torture the rich.
Re:I wonder if the framers of the constitution...
on
Dow vs. Parody
·
· Score: 2
To be fraud, they must be attempting to get something of value.
Either that, or the other explanation that's been floated around here.
Since only the indie and activist sites are reporting it, is it just an urban legend? I'd assume that the major networks would have sent an intern to dig for any additional information beyond these less-than-reliable websites. However, if that intern came back with "Dow says they didn't file such a lawsuit, and I can't seem to find anybody who other than the activist sites you gave methat say otherwise." I doubt the story would make it into a 30 minute newscast.
"Web rumor turns out to not have any proof behind it" doesn't exactly make the news.
Re:Didn't you read my submission...
on
Dow vs. Parody
·
· Score: 2
Wrong order of events though, Dow never asked for The Thing to be shut down.
Dow simply asked Verio that it see to it that the site was removed from the web. Verio called The Thing, but they had gone home for the night. (Make a note... if you ever plan on running an ISP that hosts contraversial content, have somebody on your admin staff carry a beeper!.) Since The Thing couldn't/wouldn't help get the site down, Verio had to do it the only way they had to power to do, which was unplug the thing as a whole.
Verio didn't like having to do that, especially because it made them look like they wanted to take down hundreds of sites that had nothing to do with this situation. So, Verio decided they wanted to get out of this mess, so they used an out clause in their contract with The Thing.
Dow only wanted one site shut down... it's Verio who's walking out on The Thing as a whole.
Re:Dow complaint seems valid
on
Dow vs. Parody
·
· Score: 2
(just as long as the disclaimed it all somewhere)
Fatal Error: Disclaimer not found.
Re:I wonder if the framers of the constitution...
on
Dow vs. Parody
·
· Score: 2
As for defamation, printing negative information is not libel if it is true...
Sorry. That exemption doesn't apply here. They're posting press releases that sure look like they're real Dow press releases, but are things Dow never said and likely would never want to say in a press release.
Drop that line of reasoning, it gets you nowhere. These "press releases" are certainly not the truth. They translate to "Dow Chemical announced today that 1+1=2." Even though it's a true math fact, Dow never made any announcement about it, so the statement is false.
Re:But, did you know the net is only for commerce?
on
Dow vs. Parody
·
· Score: 2
Congratulations... you just hammered another nail into The Yes Men's coffin.
You just bought a statement that didn't come from Dow, but actually came from a parody site. You then turned around and reported it to the Slashdot audience as if it really was a position statement released by Dow.
This is exactly what Dow has a right to protect itself against... from forgery that is so convincing it suckered you into thinking it was authentic. You now have a further damaged opinion of Dow Chemical. (Not that they're squeaky clean to begin with, but they're entitled to not have to get blamed for things other people claiming to be them do.)
You've just proven why The Yes Men deserve to be in jail. They're nothing more than con men, just instead of taking money, they're taking away the credibility of companies they don't like.
Re:Do not pass go, do not collect $200
on
Dow vs. Parody
·
· Score: 2
As I posted elsewhere, two wrongs still don't make a right.
The lack of resistance is a bug rather than a feature.
The mechancial keys on an old typewriter would trigger before being fully depressed, therefore you could type without having to hit the endpoint where the resistance becomes a solid wall, you could pull up gradually when you wanted to.
Most "quiet" keyboards offer little to no resistance as the key goes down, but an absolute solid wall once the key is fully down. what's more, the key does not register unless you have gone all of the way down, so you're required to hit that wall.
It's the sudden stop that's bothering the woman in question here, having constant weak resistance is what she wants.
Early keyboards used to have a "clicking" resistance mechanism, until "quiet" keyboards created the "flying until you hit a wall" feeling that the poster's wife complained of.
We seem to all have standardized now on similar keyboards in tactile function, but that clearly leaves a market to serve those who perfer other styles of keyboard. Could this kind of keyboard-that-feels-like-a-typewriter device have enough appeal to get a mainstream keyboard maker behind it?
Yet residency is a matter of interpretation. Hillary Clinton's claim to residency in the state of New York is weak, yet it's strong enough for her to legally be elected Senator representing that state.
It just takes one state with easy to qualify residency standards, and everybody will suddenly become a "resident" of that state, and Oregon would have no way to inflict that requirement on a visitor from another state who just happens to own property in Oregon.
That "within a year" loophole leaves a lot of wiggle room.
Not only that, but any rollout plan would have to either be state backed, or it would cause people to quit their jobs because they can no longer afford to travel to it.
Suddenly businesses leave Oregon, and more taxes go out due to this plan then come in.
GPS can be jammed regionally. I wonder if it could be rammed though Congress that any state that tries to enact this hairbrained tax scheme gets their GPS signal accuracy degraded to an annoying margin of error until they repeal it.
It's really surprising that gas stations don't market themselves like other products do, where the price tag contains the true price and the taxes are added when you pay. Gas would look something like "70 cents/gal + Taxes".
Thankfully, this is a law "being considered" by legislators who haven't yet been hit with the reality that this tax is unenforcable, and therefore won't work.
The problem is, the "Good Faith and Credit Clause" of the U.S. Constitution means that licenses issed by any state are valid in all fifty. What's more, a car with California plates can legally drive on Oregon roads.
The thing is, Oregon cannot require California-registered cars (or cars registered to any of the 49 other states) to have their tracking devices.
Another cause of death: Suddenly every road in the state effectively becomes a toll road. That'll cost them in federal highway funds, as toll roads in theory are supposed to be spending those tolls on their own repairs. And, you can surely bet the neighboring states' representives will see to it that Oregon loses all their highway funds for implamenting this kind of tax.
So, it's a nice chance to beat up a clueless state legislator or two for getting a little too 1984-ish on us... but there's really nothing to fear here. This law is D.O.A.
MOD PARENT DOWN -1 OFF-TOPIC
on
Dow vs. Parody
·
· Score: 2
Sorry, what you say is true, but even people who are truely the first poster aren't allowed to say "First Post!" without being modded down.
How the DMCA got involved
on
Dow vs. Parody
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
This kind of misrepresentation and use of Dow's trademarks in a way that makes people thing The Yes Men's site belonged to Dow has always been illegal under assorted trademark and copyright laws, and has nothing to do with the DMCA.
Where the DMCA kicks in is the takedown provisions. Dow called Verio and said "Get this off the Web now!" and Verio was required to honor that request. Verio tried calling The Thing, but they weren't available because they had shut down for the day and didn't leave anyway to contact anyone in control. Verio had no way to delete the site other than to pull their whole line, so they did.
Eventually The Thing pulled the illegal site, and Verio restored access. However, because The Thing caused this whole mess by not having somebody on call who could respond to the takedown demand, they downtime was theirs even though Verio is taking the blame. Verio has now decided they don't want to do business with The Thing anymore, because they don't like being blamed for their customer's inactions.
A "just kidding" notice on The Onion
on
Dow vs. Parody
·
· Score: 2
"The Onion is a satirical weekly publication published 47 times a year on Thursdays."
Also on the same page: "The Onion uses invented names in all its stories, except in cases where public figures are being satirized. Any other use of real names is accidental and coincidental."
Re:Do not pass go, do not collect $200
on
Dow vs. Parody
·
· Score: 2
If corporations have free speech, why can't the Yes Men? Honestly, what's the worse crime - poisoning a couple thousand people, or impersonating someone who isn't even a person?
Clearly the poisoning is worse... but two wrongs never make a right.
Do not pass go, do not collect $200
on
Dow vs. Parody
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I think for once, the parody artists have gone too far and I have to line up on the side of the big business.
Even the/. poster admits that he got fooled into thinking the "response" from Dow was really from The Yes Men. That's over the line. It's one thing to be critical of Dow's actions, but it's another thing all together to confuse people into thinking you are Dow while making statements that Dow doesn't want make.
Yeah, Dow was a little underhanded to make the phone call after business hours, but The Thing could have blocked that trick simply by having a 24/7 answering service and an admin with a beeper. It's hard for them to try to claim that they aren't responsible for striking a website when they are told that what the site owners are doing is against the law, and I don't see why doing exactly what they were doing should be legal.
I think a very big point that needs to be made about the kind of system we're discussing is that it's only designed to be a tool that helps pharmacists with the boring repetitive pill-counting part of their job.
The phamacist will still have the responsiblity for double-checking this machine's actions (hey, Viagra's not supposed be yellow...) and also still have the responsibility to consult tell the patient what they should be doing before/after using the medication and what to do if they forget about a dose.
My brother recently had his wisdom teeth removed, and when we took the perscription to the phamacist she was visibily worried that she was out of stock on the perscribed pain-killer, because she realized my brother was in pain at home for every second that was wasted. She went to her computer and was relieved to learn that she had it in the back room, but finding it in that back room and then counting was a process that still costs time. I'm sure that she would have loved to be able to type the number into the computer and have the bottle pop out onto her desk so we could be sent back to my brother faster.
Because doctors can perscribe any whole number of pills to any given individual. (In fact, they can perscribe half pills at times too.) The law requires that the pharmacist give exactly the number of pills perscribed, no more and no less.
Having them in pre-packaged units works for some medications, but for the vast majority you'd still find the phamacist having to rip the blister packs in half in order to get the exact number of doses the doctor requested.
Slashdot Mirror
And some older computer users still hit the "l" when they mean "1" to this day on their computers for exactly that reason.
That substitution, which is now generally thought of as a typo, is a dead giveaway to the age of the typist when you see it made.
Basically what has happened here is that it is illegal to point out that a company is killing people.
No, it's illegal to pretend represent a company you're not a part of, even if that company is one that is killing people.
The Yes Men could have written a site as themselves in which they talk about what Dow has done. However, since Dow's misdeads pale in comparision to the misdeads of other wrongdoers (such as the government of Iraq for one example) so that it'd be hard for them to get media attention when they have to compete on the same playing field as those stories.
Instead, they're trying to jump to the top by impersonating the website of Dow, which breaks several copyright and trademark laws in the process. Yeah, that gets them attention, but it does so by doing something illegal.
By the way, Rosa Parks went to jail for a time for doing what she did. If you're going to do civil disobedience, paying for your crime is part of the deal.
I don't get it. Dow dumps chemicals, they get sued by the people they've harmed. Those people turn around and dump contaminated soil on Dow, and they shouldn't be sued?
Sorry, being poor doesn't mean you get to torture the rich.
Ones good name is something of value.
Either that, or the other explanation that's been floated around here.
Since only the indie and activist sites are reporting it, is it just an urban legend? I'd assume that the major networks would have sent an intern to dig for any additional information beyond these less-than-reliable websites. However, if that intern came back with "Dow says they didn't file such a lawsuit, and I can't seem to find anybody who other than the activist sites you gave methat say otherwise." I doubt the story would make it into a 30 minute newscast.
"Web rumor turns out to not have any proof behind it" doesn't exactly make the news.
Wrong order of events though, Dow never asked for The Thing to be shut down.
Dow simply asked Verio that it see to it that the site was removed from the web. Verio called The Thing, but they had gone home for the night. (Make a note... if you ever plan on running an ISP that hosts contraversial content, have somebody on your admin staff carry a beeper!.) Since The Thing couldn't/wouldn't help get the site down, Verio had to do it the only way they had to power to do, which was unplug the thing as a whole.
Verio didn't like having to do that, especially because it made them look like they wanted to take down hundreds of sites that had nothing to do with this situation. So, Verio decided they wanted to get out of this mess, so they used an out clause in their contract with The Thing.
Dow only wanted one site shut down... it's Verio who's walking out on The Thing as a whole.
(just as long as the disclaimed it all somewhere)
Fatal Error: Disclaimer not found.
As for defamation, printing negative information is not libel if it is true...
Sorry. That exemption doesn't apply here. They're posting press releases that sure look like they're real Dow press releases, but are things Dow never said and likely would never want to say in a press release.
Drop that line of reasoning, it gets you nowhere. These "press releases" are certainly not the truth. They translate to "Dow Chemical announced today that 1+1=2." Even though it's a true math fact, Dow never made any announcement about it, so the statement is false.
Congratulations... you just hammered another nail into The Yes Men's coffin.
You just bought a statement that didn't come from Dow, but actually came from a parody site. You then turned around and reported it to the Slashdot audience as if it really was a position statement released by Dow.
This is exactly what Dow has a right to protect itself against... from forgery that is so convincing it suckered you into thinking it was authentic. You now have a further damaged opinion of Dow Chemical. (Not that they're squeaky clean to begin with, but they're entitled to not have to get blamed for things other people claiming to be them do.)
You've just proven why The Yes Men deserve to be in jail. They're nothing more than con men, just instead of taking money, they're taking away the credibility of companies they don't like.
As I posted elsewhere, two wrongs still don't make a right.
The lack of resistance is a bug rather than a feature.
The mechancial keys on an old typewriter would trigger before being fully depressed, therefore you could type without having to hit the endpoint where the resistance becomes a solid wall, you could pull up gradually when you wanted to.
Most "quiet" keyboards offer little to no resistance as the key goes down, but an absolute solid wall once the key is fully down. what's more, the key does not register unless you have gone all of the way down, so you're required to hit that wall.
It's the sudden stop that's bothering the woman in question here, having constant weak resistance is what she wants.
Early keyboards used to have a "clicking" resistance mechanism, until "quiet" keyboards created the "flying until you hit a wall" feeling that the poster's wife complained of.
We seem to all have standardized now on similar keyboards in tactile function, but that clearly leaves a market to serve those who perfer other styles of keyboard. Could this kind of keyboard-that-feels-like-a-typewriter device have enough appeal to get a mainstream keyboard maker behind it?
No. The only sensable way to implament the tax they want is to forget about in-car transponders, and put up toll booths all over the state.
Yet residency is a matter of interpretation. Hillary Clinton's claim to residency in the state of New York is weak, yet it's strong enough for her to legally be elected Senator representing that state.
It just takes one state with easy to qualify residency standards, and everybody will suddenly become a "resident" of that state, and Oregon would have no way to inflict that requirement on a visitor from another state who just happens to own property in Oregon.
That "within a year" loophole leaves a lot of wiggle room.
Not only that, but any rollout plan would have to either be state backed, or it would cause people to quit their jobs because they can no longer afford to travel to it. Suddenly businesses leave Oregon, and more taxes go out due to this plan then come in.
GPS can be jammed regionally. I wonder if it could be rammed though Congress that any state that tries to enact this hairbrained tax scheme gets their GPS signal accuracy degraded to an annoying margin of error until they repeal it.
It's really surprising that gas stations don't market themselves like other products do, where the price tag contains the true price and the taxes are added when you pay. Gas would look something like "70 cents/gal + Taxes".
Thankfully, this is a law "being considered" by legislators who haven't yet been hit with the reality that this tax is unenforcable, and therefore won't work.
The problem is, the "Good Faith and Credit Clause" of the U.S. Constitution means that licenses issed by any state are valid in all fifty. What's more, a car with California plates can legally drive on Oregon roads.
The thing is, Oregon cannot require California-registered cars (or cars registered to any of the 49 other states) to have their tracking devices.
Another cause of death: Suddenly every road in the state effectively becomes a toll road. That'll cost them in federal highway funds, as toll roads in theory are supposed to be spending those tolls on their own repairs. And, you can surely bet the neighboring states' representives will see to it that Oregon loses all their highway funds for implamenting this kind of tax.
So, it's a nice chance to beat up a clueless state legislator or two for getting a little too 1984-ish on us... but there's really nothing to fear here. This law is D.O.A.
Sorry, what you say is true, but even people who are truely the first poster aren't allowed to say "First Post!" without being modded down.
This kind of misrepresentation and use of Dow's trademarks in a way that makes people thing The Yes Men's site belonged to Dow has always been illegal under assorted trademark and copyright laws, and has nothing to do with the DMCA.
Where the DMCA kicks in is the takedown provisions. Dow called Verio and said "Get this off the Web now!" and Verio was required to honor that request. Verio tried calling The Thing, but they weren't available because they had shut down for the day and didn't leave anyway to contact anyone in control. Verio had no way to delete the site other than to pull their whole line, so they did.
Eventually The Thing pulled the illegal site, and Verio restored access. However, because The Thing caused this whole mess by not having somebody on call who could respond to the takedown demand, they downtime was theirs even though Verio is taking the blame. Verio has now decided they don't want to do business with The Thing anymore, because they don't like being blamed for their customer's inactions.
Their own FAQ starts off with...
"The Onion is a satirical weekly publication published 47 times a year on Thursdays."
Also on the same page:
"The Onion uses invented names in all its stories, except in cases where public figures are being satirized. Any other use of real names is accidental and coincidental."
If corporations have free speech, why can't the Yes Men? Honestly, what's the worse crime - poisoning a couple thousand people, or impersonating someone who isn't even a person?
Clearly the poisoning is worse... but two wrongs never make a right.
I think for once, the parody artists have gone too far and I have to line up on the side of the big business.
/. poster admits that he got fooled into thinking the "response" from Dow was really from The Yes Men. That's over the line. It's one thing to be critical of Dow's actions, but it's another thing all together to confuse people into thinking you are Dow while making statements that Dow doesn't want make.
Even the
Yeah, Dow was a little underhanded to make the phone call after business hours, but The Thing could have blocked that trick simply by having a 24/7 answering service and an admin with a beeper. It's hard for them to try to claim that they aren't responsible for striking a website when they are told that what the site owners are doing is against the law, and I don't see why doing exactly what they were doing should be legal.
I think a very big point that needs to be made about the kind of system we're discussing is that it's only designed to be a tool that helps pharmacists with the boring repetitive pill-counting part of their job.
The phamacist will still have the responsiblity for double-checking this machine's actions (hey, Viagra's not supposed be yellow...) and also still have the responsibility to consult tell the patient what they should be doing before/after using the medication and what to do if they forget about a dose.
My brother recently had his wisdom teeth removed, and when we took the perscription to the phamacist she was visibily worried that she was out of stock on the perscribed pain-killer, because she realized my brother was in pain at home for every second that was wasted. She went to her computer and was relieved to learn that she had it in the back room, but finding it in that back room and then counting was a process that still costs time. I'm sure that she would have loved to be able to type the number into the computer and have the bottle pop out onto her desk so we could be sent back to my brother faster.
Because doctors can perscribe any whole number of pills to any given individual. (In fact, they can perscribe half pills at times too.) The law requires that the pharmacist give exactly the number of pills perscribed, no more and no less.
Having them in pre-packaged units works for some medications, but for the vast majority you'd still find the phamacist having to rip the blister packs in half in order to get the exact number of doses the doctor requested.