You could say much the same thing about the Post Office. Letters you send are not only handled and delivered by the Federal Gov't, they actually spend a fair amount of time in government buildings. What, then, is the difference?
Special laws that make the US Post Office a common carrier. I suggest you write your congress critter to get the same thing for ISPs.
The exact opposite is true, government needs to pass laws before they act. Moreover, you need to pass a very special kind of law to violate the US bill of rights. Wanting to do so makes you a traitor. People don't need laws to protect their rights and laws which do must be nullified by the supreme court.
Unfortuneately for you- this specific topic in fact has been addressed and nyullified by the Supreme Court. You have no reasonable expectation of privacy in the public sphere.
Let's consider your postal analogy. If I give my physical post to a friend to deliver to someone else does the government has a right to read my mail?
Yes, if your friend decides to hand it to the government.
No, my friend has as much fourth amendment protection as I do.
Fourth ammendment means nothing once you publish.
The government should no more have a right to read my email at the ISP than they have the right to read my email on my own computer.
I completely agree with that should- but should is a far cry from what is. The status quo is that ISPs are not common carriers, and can do whatever the hell they want with their data that you publish on their servers.
Any such "rights" have been invented by people who are ignorant of or hostile to the US Constitution.
The Constitution was written long before computers existed, and thus Cyberspace isn't covered by the US Constitution. Sorry, but that's the way it is. Don't like it? Do something about it! Write your congress critter and get ISPs reclassified as common carriers under Article II of the Telecommunications Act!
It's hard to argue with such simple language. Claims of "storage" or that my email is not a "paper" are second rate sophistry.
An ISP is not a person by this defintion, and thus is not covered. Nor is data stored on a hard drive "houses, papers, and effects" so it's not covered either. You hit send- thus you wanted the ISP to make a copy and publish to anybody who has rights to pick up that e-mail. You VOLUNTARILY gave up your privacy right by hitting send.
This is an economic as well as a human rights issue.
Agreed. So write you congress critter to get the law changed- as I have done in the past and will do again.
A society that does not protect it's post can't do business and can not prosper.
The Internet is not currently considered the Post by any law- which is the basic problem. As for business- well, I tend to be of the mind that doing business is what causes poverty.
Do you know what I see as being a BIG problem? The way the Constitution was originally created was that the federal government couldn't do anything unless it was expressly told so but now it effing thinks it can do anything it wants unless it's expressly told it can't.
Yep, I completely agree- but what are you going to do about it? They've got the nukes.
That pisses me OFF!!!
As well it should- but guess what- the prisons are full of people pissed off that the government took away their freedom. Write your congress critter and try to get the law changed like we did for phone companies and the US Mail.
VOIP providers are ISPs, and do not have common carrier status. Therefore, no, you don't have any expectation of privacy using a VOIP phone or a cell phone or a ham radio or anything else that is broadcast and not specifically covered by common carrier laws.
My point is that email communications should technically be protected for the very reason that anyone making the disk access to read the data of an email is basically committing the same crime as someone opening a letter. The ISP or whoever may *own* the data to the message, but technically only the sender and recipient should have ANY right to access that data (especially before transmission is complete).
Should and is are two different things though- and right now, ISPs are not common carriers and aren't prevented to by law.
That is entirely irrelevant. We are not discussing whether or not they have the ability to read your email, but whether they have the right to read your email.
Since ISPs are not common carriers, there's nothing preventing them to do anything they are capable of doing.
Internet Service Providers have argued against being classified as a "common carrier" and, so far, have managed to do so. The argument of ISPs against common carrier classification has largely conflated "telecommunications carriers" with "common carriers," assuming that if they were labeled as "common carriers," they would be regulated under Title II of the Communications Act by the FCC. This is incorrect; as noted above, you can be a common carrier without being a telecommunications carrier. The FCC proceeding that established that Internet networks are not telecommunications carriers is the Computer Inquiries. A later FCC report, IN RE FEDERAL-STATE JOINT BOARD ON UNIVERSAL SERVICE, Report to Congress, 13 FCC Rcd. 11501 (1998), reviewed this policy (this report was not an order and did not have the effect of regulatory law - it is however, an excellent capture of FCC policy at that time).
The policy of the FCC has evolved. Traditionally, an Internet network information service would acquire its telecommunications needs from a telecommunications carrier. It was an Internet network layered on top of a telecommunications network. Pursuant to recent FCC decisions, however, Internet DSL and Internet Cable services are now considered combined as one "information service." There is no telecommunications carrier service underneath for other ISPs to use. This has resulted in a transformation of the ISP market. Previously, thousands of ISPs had access to the telephone network. Now, with no broadband telecommunications carrier service available, there are generally only two Internet broadband providers in a residential market: the cable Internet provider and the DSL Internet provider. Cable ISPs and the DSL ISPs have market power and have both the incentive and opportunity to discriminate with regard to content and applications used over their networks. The AT&T CEO has declared that Google should no longer get a free ride, and should pay AT&T in order to be delivered to AT&T's customers. This is a dramatic departure from 100 years of telecommunications carrier history.[neutrality disputed] This has led to the argument in favor of network neutrality and a return to the common carrier principles that networks should not be able to discriminate with regard to content nor be liable for content.
I'm not sure what that has to do with anything today - the feds do not run any part of the internet. It's entirely privatized.
And if you don't think the Justice Department, the Intelligence Community, and the Department of Defense didn't keep some sort of a trapdoor into the major backbones, I've got a covered bridge in Lane County....
Not really once you realize that they needed to pass a special law for:
By your reasoning, any letter you send is property of the Post Office, therefore they have the right to read it without a warrant.
And without the laws preventing this EXTERNAL to the Constitution, they'd have just such a right.
And any phone call you make is property of the phone company, therefore they have the right to listen in to it without a warrant.
And before the wiretapping laws they had just such a right- such evidence was used in Al Capone's case for instance.
While both of these have certainly been done (and not just by Bush and Friends), there is significant dispute over their legality, even after the outgoing congress passed a special new law to legalize ongoing activity.
Yes, but that's only because of PREVIOUS LAWS making this illegal. ISPs are NOT common carriers, and have no such laws about them yet. I don't disagree that this isn't how it should be, but it is what it is. Write your congress critter to change this.
My guess is that Fedex etal will say you can't haveinformation on our clients without a warrant/subpoena.
More likely, like most businesses, they'll take the easy way out unless forced to by contract law. I haven't examined the shipper contract on a fedex package recently- does it now include such a guarantee?
Otherwise why not just station a lay enforcement officer at all FEdex depot to search everything for potential criminal activity. On a kind of related note, several of my friends used to work at a UPS center during college and they said their instructions from the company in the event of accidental opening was to put it back in the box and ignore it even if it was weed or something.
Interesting. I wonder what the UPS contract says? Or maybe they simply don't want the issue coming up in case the government does just that: station a law enforcement officer at their depots.....
Sealed- but yes, very much so. A normal e-mail isn't a sealed envelope. A normal e-mail can contain a sealed envelope- that's what PGP is for- but since there aren't any laws protecting virtual sealed envelopes yet, you take your chance that the encryption won't be broken. They'll need a warrent to get you to give up the key though....
So if I send a work I've copyrighted through email, the ISP owns it?
They own that copy- which you as the copyright owner freely gave them by ASKING THEIR E-MAIL SERVER TO MAKE A COPY!
Damn! Should the Fed have the right to open your snail mail, too?
They did with US Mail before they passed a bunch of laws making it illegal. They still have the right to open snail mail sent through FedEx, UPS, or a half dozen other private carriers.
What's the difference?
The difference is that the laws haven't been passed to make snooping on e-mail illegal. Or for that matter, UPS and FedEx packets.
Even when in public, I have a right to reasonable privacy.
Not by the Supreme Court, who ruled that you have NO reasonable expectation of privacy in the public sphere.
For instance, it's illegal to take pictures up someone's skirt. UP their skirt, you know, from ground level? If someone happens to be leaving a car and wearing no undies, that's different.
Yes, but that's a different special exception law- like the special exception of privacy in the US Mail. No such law has been passed for the Internet yet.
You seem to be making up legal precedent to suit your argument. The internet is not "the public domain." How is it different than phone lines?
The laws haven't been passed to make ISPs common carriers yet.
I mean, your phone conversation passes through many different telcos and any of them could easily listen to your conversations, but this is illegal.
Yes, but once again, special exception laws had to be passed to create that expectation of privacy in the public sphere.
How is the Internet different?
There aren't any laws creating privacy there yet.
Don't ISPs have common carrier status, and doesn't that preclude them from monitoring your communications?
No, ISPs do NOT have common carrier status- and they can do whatever the hell they want to as far as monitoring your communications are concerned.
And doesn't the government have to play by different rules anyway?
Yes, to a certain extent- but you can't smoke a joint in front of a policeman and expect not to get arrested either.
In the US, our government is bound by the Constitution which precludes them from doing certain things that a company could do.
True, but this isn't one of them, because the Internet wasn't created at the time the Constitution was. Neither were phones or the US Mail service- which is why special laws had to be passed by Congress to create privacy in that portion of the public sphere.
In short, your argument makes no sense It almost seems as if you are being contrary just to be contrary. I can say that black is no different than white, but that won't make it so any more than your claims about our legal and governmental systems make them true.
And claiming common carrier status for ISPs when no such law has been passed is just plain stupid.
Thank you for the first INTELIGENT post that actually pokes a hole in my argument. You're completely correct- to a certain extent. But since these are corporate entities rather than private individuals, they often play by a different set of rules- if it isn't forbidden by a policy in their charter or by your contract with them, you've got no reasonable expectation that they're not just going to hand it over to whomever asks for it.
Yep- and just as a paper you nail to the telephone pole down the street becomes a part of the public sphere and no longer your property, so too is it with e-mail when you hit SEND. I like your analogy- you just didn't take it far enough.
Your assertion is not unlike suggesting that I have no expectation of privacy in postal mail because for a length of time it was in the posession of a Federal agency, the US Post Office.
And that would be completely correct if it wasn't for a set of special laws protecting the US Post Office- that same set of laws has NOT been passed for the Internet. If you want them- you need to write your congress critter.
How is the sidewalk in front of a business the responsibility of its (the business's) owner? He doesn't own it.
Actually, your property line runs right out to the center of the street. The city has used the law of eminent domain to create a right of way- but in many cases you're responsible for maintainance of that right of way.
Why are we mixing liability with morals here? Not every tort is a sin. Are you a lawyer?
Worse, I'm a Catholic. Anything that harms the relationship between individuals in a community is a sin. Torts definately fall into that category. So I'll admit to using a different defintion of SIN than most would. It's part of my problem with the whole idea of capitalism in the end- profit cannot be separated from corruption very easily, and in some cases, simply can't be separated at all.
Can emails you send be considered your "effects"? It's a good question.
I'd say NO- for the very reason put forth by the Feds. Once you send it out, that copy of the data belongs to the ISP, not you. No different than committing a crime in front of the local police station when you get right down to it.
Different public domain. When you're talking privacy laws, the Internet is more like FedEx, UPS, or your local city park than it is like a phone line or the highly protected US Mail.
The difference being that the US Mail has laws protecting it's privacy. FedEx, UPS, and your local mailserver simply don't. It's perfectly legal for them to snoop on a FedEx overnight envelope while it's stored at a FedEx warehouse or when it hits the central depository in Chicago.
No Reasonable Expectation of Privacy in the Public Domain don't you understand?
Like it or not, the Internet was built by the Federal Government- and it very much is the public domain. Any message sent across it unencrypted is just as much fair game for prosecutuion as taking a picture of you mooning other cars on the freeway.
Of course it would. Frivolous lawsuits have zero to do with how businesses operate and everything to do with individuals' greed.
Not entirely- 10% of so-called frivolous lawsuits actually have enough merit to win large awards. The reason they win such awards is because the business did something wrong- there was indeed forseeable harm. Because of that one-in-ten chance, the free market dictates that other gamblers will take the chance- and will find lawyers who will support them. But when a business takes OBVIOUS measures, such as salting icy sidewalks and putting up stupid signs like "Wildlife exists in outdoor malls", then there's no chance of winning a lawsuit, and thus, one never gets filed.
I think that you and the rest of us are using different working definitions for the word "frivolous."
I'm using the definition that http://www.stellaawards.com/ uses. A case where, if both parties were acting reasonably, could easily be settled out of court instead of wasting taxpayer money to try the case. 9 times out of 10 the businesses do indeed win such cases- but if they had acted MORALLY instead of PROFITABLY in the same situation, then no lawyer in the world would have filed a lawsuit to begin with. These lawsuits get filed because there is a 10% chance of actual wrongdoing on the part of the business- if there were no chance of wining, there'd be no settlement to take legal fees out of.
I don't know what you mean by "information coming from apparently nowhere."
Think of the universe as a three dimensional array- with each point in the universe being a unique element in the array. The problem with inflation is that it adds elements to the array with information in them (even if that information is null) without it apparently coming from anywhere. It's more matter an energy (or a lack of matter and energy) that is being created without a creator- and it's still going on.....
Slashdot Mirror
You could say much the same thing about the Post Office. Letters you send are not only handled and delivered by the Federal Gov't, they actually spend a fair amount of time in government buildings. What, then, is the difference?
Special laws that make the US Post Office a common carrier. I suggest you write your congress critter to get the same thing for ISPs.
The exact opposite is true, government needs to pass laws before they act. Moreover, you need to pass a very special kind of law to violate the US bill of rights. Wanting to do so makes you a traitor. People don't need laws to protect their rights and laws which do must be nullified by the supreme court.
Unfortuneately for you- this specific topic in fact has been addressed and nyullified by the Supreme Court. You have no reasonable expectation of privacy in the public sphere.
Let's consider your postal analogy. If I give my physical post to a friend to deliver to someone else does the government has a right to read my mail?
Yes, if your friend decides to hand it to the government.
No, my friend has as much fourth amendment protection as I do.
Fourth ammendment means nothing once you publish.
The government should no more have a right to read my email at the ISP than they have the right to read my email on my own computer.
I completely agree with that should- but should is a far cry from what is. The status quo is that ISPs are not common carriers, and can do whatever the hell they want with their data that you publish on their servers.
Any such "rights" have been invented by people who are ignorant of or hostile to the US Constitution.
The Constitution was written long before computers existed, and thus Cyberspace isn't covered by the US Constitution. Sorry, but that's the way it is. Don't like it? Do something about it! Write your congress critter and get ISPs reclassified as common carriers under Article II of the Telecommunications Act!
It's hard to argue with such simple language. Claims of "storage" or that my email is not a "paper" are second rate sophistry.
An ISP is not a person by this defintion, and thus is not covered. Nor is data stored on a hard drive "houses, papers, and effects" so it's not covered either. You hit send- thus you wanted the ISP to make a copy and publish to anybody who has rights to pick up that e-mail. You VOLUNTARILY gave up your privacy right by hitting send.
This is an economic as well as a human rights issue.
Agreed. So write you congress critter to get the law changed- as I have done in the past and will do again.
A society that does not protect it's post can't do business and can not prosper.
The Internet is not currently considered the Post by any law- which is the basic problem. As for business- well, I tend to be of the mind that doing business is what causes poverty.
Do you know what I see as being a BIG problem? The way the Constitution was originally created was that the federal government couldn't do anything unless it was expressly told so but now it effing thinks it can do anything it wants unless it's expressly told it can't.
Yep, I completely agree- but what are you going to do about it? They've got the nukes.
That pisses me OFF!!!
As well it should- but guess what- the prisons are full of people pissed off that the government took away their freedom. Write your congress critter and try to get the law changed like we did for phone companies and the US Mail.
So, it's an easy step from here to say "let's pass a law that recognizes ISP's as common carriers".
And I have NO objection to that, and in fact encourage it. I didn't say I LIKED the status quo!
VOIP providers are ISPs, and do not have common carrier status. Therefore, no, you don't have any expectation of privacy using a VOIP phone or a cell phone or a ham radio or anything else that is broadcast and not specifically covered by common carrier laws.
My point is that email communications should technically be protected for the very reason that anyone making the disk access to read the data of an email is basically committing the same crime as someone opening a letter. The ISP or whoever may *own* the data to the message, but technically only the sender and recipient should have ANY right to access that data (especially before transmission is complete).
Should and is are two different things though- and right now, ISPs are not common carriers and aren't prevented to by law.
That is entirely irrelevant. We are not discussing whether or not they have the ability to read your email, but whether they have the right to read your email.
Since ISPs are not common carriers, there's nothing preventing them to do anything they are capable of doing.
Internet Service Providers have argued against being classified as a "common carrier" and, so far, have managed to do so. The argument of ISPs against common carrier classification has largely conflated "telecommunications carriers" with "common carriers," assuming that if they were labeled as "common carriers," they would be regulated under Title II of the Communications Act by the FCC. This is incorrect; as noted above, you can be a common carrier without being a telecommunications carrier. The FCC proceeding that established that Internet networks are not telecommunications carriers is the Computer Inquiries. A later FCC report, IN RE FEDERAL-STATE JOINT BOARD ON UNIVERSAL SERVICE, Report to Congress, 13 FCC Rcd. 11501 (1998), reviewed this policy (this report was not an order and did not have the effect of regulatory law - it is however, an excellent capture of FCC policy at that time).
The policy of the FCC has evolved. Traditionally, an Internet network information service would acquire its telecommunications needs from a telecommunications carrier. It was an Internet network layered on top of a telecommunications network. Pursuant to recent FCC decisions, however, Internet DSL and Internet Cable services are now considered combined as one "information service." There is no telecommunications carrier service underneath for other ISPs to use. This has resulted in a transformation of the ISP market. Previously, thousands of ISPs had access to the telephone network. Now, with no broadband telecommunications carrier service available, there are generally only two Internet broadband providers in a residential market: the cable Internet provider and the DSL Internet provider. Cable ISPs and the DSL ISPs have market power and have both the incentive and opportunity to discriminate with regard to content and applications used over their networks. The AT&T CEO has declared that Google should no longer get a free ride, and should pay AT&T in order to be delivered to AT&T's customers. This is a dramatic departure from 100 years of telecommunications carrier history.[neutrality disputed] This has led to the argument in favor of network neutrality and a return to the common carrier principles that networks should not be able to discriminate with regard to content nor be liable for content.
I'm not sure what that has to do with anything today - the feds do not run any part of the internet. It's entirely privatized.
And if you don't think the Justice Department, the Intelligence Community, and the Department of Defense didn't keep some sort of a trapdoor into the major backbones, I've got a covered bridge in Lane County....
Sure it's different.
Not really once you realize that they needed to pass a special law for:
By your reasoning, any letter you send is property of the Post Office, therefore they have the right to read it without a warrant.
And without the laws preventing this EXTERNAL to the Constitution, they'd have just such a right.
And any phone call you make is property of the phone company, therefore they have the right to listen in to it without a warrant.
And before the wiretapping laws they had just such a right- such evidence was used in Al Capone's case for instance.
While both of these have certainly been done (and not just by Bush and Friends), there is significant dispute over their legality, even after the outgoing congress passed a special new law to legalize ongoing activity.
Yes, but that's only because of PREVIOUS LAWS making this illegal. ISPs are NOT common carriers, and have no such laws about them yet. I don't disagree that this isn't how it should be, but it is what it is. Write your congress critter to change this.
I think this is only if Fedex lets them.
True.
My guess is that Fedex etal will say you can't haveinformation on our clients without a warrant/subpoena.
More likely, like most businesses, they'll take the easy way out unless forced to by contract law. I haven't examined the shipper contract on a fedex package recently- does it now include such a guarantee?
Otherwise why not just station a lay enforcement officer at all FEdex depot to search everything for potential criminal activity. On a kind of related note, several of my friends used to work at a UPS center during college and they said their instructions from the company in the event of accidental opening was to put it back in the box and ignore it even if it was weed or something.
Interesting. I wonder what the UPS contract says? Or maybe they simply don't want the issue coming up in case the government does just that: station a law enforcement officer at their depots.....
Sealed- but yes, very much so. A normal e-mail isn't a sealed envelope. A normal e-mail can contain a sealed envelope- that's what PGP is for- but since there aren't any laws protecting virtual sealed envelopes yet, you take your chance that the encryption won't be broken. They'll need a warrent to get you to give up the key though....
So if I send a work I've copyrighted through email, the ISP owns it?
They own that copy- which you as the copyright owner freely gave them by ASKING THEIR E-MAIL SERVER TO MAKE A COPY!
Damn! Should the Fed have the right to open your snail mail, too?
They did with US Mail before they passed a bunch of laws making it illegal. They still have the right to open snail mail sent through FedEx, UPS, or a half dozen other private carriers.
What's the difference?
The difference is that the laws haven't been passed to make snooping on e-mail illegal. Or for that matter, UPS and FedEx packets.
Even when in public, I have a right to reasonable privacy.
Not by the Supreme Court, who ruled that you have NO reasonable expectation of privacy in the public sphere.
For instance, it's illegal to take pictures up someone's skirt. UP their skirt, you know, from ground level? If someone happens to be leaving a car and wearing no undies, that's different.
Yes, but that's a different special exception law- like the special exception of privacy in the US Mail. No such law has been passed for the Internet yet.
You seem to be making up legal precedent to suit your argument. The internet is not "the public domain." How is it different than phone lines?
The laws haven't been passed to make ISPs common carriers yet.
I mean, your phone conversation passes through many different telcos and any of them could easily listen to your conversations, but this is illegal.
Yes, but once again, special exception laws had to be passed to create that expectation of privacy in the public sphere.
How is the Internet different?
There aren't any laws creating privacy there yet.
Don't ISPs have common carrier status, and doesn't that preclude them from monitoring your communications?
No, ISPs do NOT have common carrier status- and they can do whatever the hell they want to as far as monitoring your communications are concerned.
And doesn't the government have to play by different rules anyway?
Yes, to a certain extent- but you can't smoke a joint in front of a policeman and expect not to get arrested either.
In the US, our government is bound by the Constitution which precludes them from doing certain things that a company could do.
True, but this isn't one of them, because the Internet wasn't created at the time the Constitution was. Neither were phones or the US Mail service- which is why special laws had to be passed by Congress to create privacy in that portion of the public sphere.
In short, your argument makes no sense It almost seems as if you are being contrary just to be contrary. I can say that black is no different than white, but that won't make it so any more than your claims about our legal and governmental systems make them true.
And claiming common carrier status for ISPs when no such law has been passed is just plain stupid.
Thank you for the first INTELIGENT post that actually pokes a hole in my argument. You're completely correct- to a certain extent. But since these are corporate entities rather than private individuals, they often play by a different set of rules- if it isn't forbidden by a policy in their charter or by your contract with them, you've got no reasonable expectation that they're not just going to hand it over to whomever asks for it.
Yep- and just as a paper you nail to the telephone pole down the street becomes a part of the public sphere and no longer your property, so too is it with e-mail when you hit SEND. I like your analogy- you just didn't take it far enough.
Your assertion is not unlike suggesting that I have no expectation of privacy in postal mail because for a length of time it was in the posession of a Federal agency, the US Post Office.
And that would be completely correct if it wasn't for a set of special laws protecting the US Post Office- that same set of laws has NOT been passed for the Internet. If you want them- you need to write your congress critter.
See definition of frivolous.
See definition of Propaganda.
How is the sidewalk in front of a business the responsibility of its (the business's) owner? He doesn't own it.
Actually, your property line runs right out to the center of the street. The city has used the law of eminent domain to create a right of way- but in many cases you're responsible for maintainance of that right of way.
Why are we mixing liability with morals here? Not every tort is a sin. Are you a lawyer?
Worse, I'm a Catholic. Anything that harms the relationship between individuals in a community is a sin. Torts definately fall into that category. So I'll admit to using a different defintion of SIN than most would. It's part of my problem with the whole idea of capitalism in the end- profit cannot be separated from corruption very easily, and in some cases, simply can't be separated at all.
Can emails you send be considered your "effects"? It's a good question.
I'd say NO- for the very reason put forth by the Feds. Once you send it out, that copy of the data belongs to the ISP, not you. No different than committing a crime in front of the local police station when you get right down to it.
Different public domain. When you're talking privacy laws, the Internet is more like FedEx, UPS, or your local city park than it is like a phone line or the highly protected US Mail.
The difference being that the US Mail has laws protecting it's privacy. FedEx, UPS, and your local mailserver simply don't. It's perfectly legal for them to snoop on a FedEx overnight envelope while it's stored at a FedEx warehouse or when it hits the central depository in Chicago.
No Reasonable Expectation of Privacy in the Public Domain don't you understand?
Like it or not, the Internet was built by the Federal Government- and it very much is the public domain. Any message sent across it unencrypted is just as much fair game for prosecutuion as taking a picture of you mooning other cars on the freeway.
Of course it would. Frivolous lawsuits have zero to do with how businesses operate and everything to do with individuals' greed.
Not entirely- 10% of so-called frivolous lawsuits actually have enough merit to win large awards. The reason they win such awards is because the business did something wrong- there was indeed forseeable harm. Because of that one-in-ten chance, the free market dictates that other gamblers will take the chance- and will find lawyers who will support them. But when a business takes OBVIOUS measures, such as salting icy sidewalks and putting up stupid signs like "Wildlife exists in outdoor malls", then there's no chance of winning a lawsuit, and thus, one never gets filed.
I think that you and the rest of us are using different working definitions for the word "frivolous."
I'm using the definition that http://www.stellaawards.com/ uses. A case where, if both parties were acting reasonably, could easily be settled out of court instead of wasting taxpayer money to try the case. 9 times out of 10 the businesses do indeed win such cases- but if they had acted MORALLY instead of PROFITABLY in the same situation, then no lawyer in the world would have filed a lawsuit to begin with. These lawsuits get filed because there is a 10% chance of actual wrongdoing on the part of the business- if there were no chance of wining, there'd be no settlement to take legal fees out of.
and space that didn't exist at the time you passed its current location
So where are the extra data points coming from, and why are they apparently being added in between instead of at the edge?
I don't know what you mean by "information coming from apparently nowhere."
Think of the universe as a three dimensional array- with each point in the universe being a unique element in the array. The problem with inflation is that it adds elements to the array with information in them (even if that information is null) without it apparently coming from anywhere. It's more matter an energy (or a lack of matter and energy) that is being created without a creator- and it's still going on.....