Honestly, even if it happened on national level, it wouldn't make the American electoral system any less of a farce. The prevailing opinion on this thread appears to be: let me say and show whatever they want, just don't let them call during dinner.
Two big words of warning:
1) This law is probably unconstitutional where political speech is concerned. Political speech is more protected than mere commercial speech, so while it may be able to stop sales call harrassment, it won't stop solicitations for political organizations. Also, it won't stop calls from companies with whom you have a pre-existing business relationship (i.e. your phone company), unless you specifically tell them (preferably in writing) that you do not want to be solicited in the future.
2) I've tried using this law to chase junk faxers and it is an enormous waste of time. You can catch the small-timer local advertisers (by suing them personally and joining the junk faxer, if you can find them), but the penny-stock faxes will keep coming through. Usually they're out of state and domesticating a local judgment to their home state and executing on it is near impossible. Not to discourage anyone, but this will not bring down the big junk fax/phone spammers (and depending on what you make an hour, may not be worth the time you invest in it).
Do you include the lawyer who defended you and your insurance company in this assessment? While the plaintiffs may have overblown their claims, let's not forget that your wife DID rear end them, so while the AMOUNT of compensation they were seeking may have been excessive, they WERE entitled to their day in court because they WERE harmed.
And FYI: if you think the costs of arbitration were outrageous, you have no idea how expensive an actual trial is.
It's clearly distinguishable. Under NO circumstances is spamming justifiable; it's unsavory in every instance. But I think everyone can agree that not EVERY lawsuit is meritless. Think civil rights lawsuits.
I don't have any hard statistical data, but I would guess that compared to the total number of lawsuits filed every day in the entire country, those lawsuits are a very very very very small percentage.
Lawyers advertise their services like everyone else, so that people know that if they ARE going to sue someone, they'll come to the advertising lawyer instead of the guy next door. But when was the last time a lawyer stopped you on the street and asked if you were interested in suing someone? Lawyers actually have ethical rules PROHIBITING us from soliciting clients (i.e. asking someone if they want to sue someone else). The CLIENTS come to the lawyer's office and say "this horrible thing happened to me and I want to sue." A client has never come to my office NOT wanting to sue someone, just to have a friendly chat and waiting for me to convince them to sue.
As for sharing the responsibility, there are definitely lawyers out there who are filing completely meritless lawsuits, but our judicial system is lenient in allowing cases to go to trial so you can say you got your day in court, even if you eventually lose. If your claim is completely unsupported by the law (or a reasonable extention thereof) your lawsuit is meritless and your lawyer is ethically prohibited from filing it. But usually that's not the case. Also, the system is set up adversarially so your lawyer is fighting hard for your point of view.
I think a lot of the blame lies with judges and juries. The judge is supposed to control what cases go to the jury and how the jury is instructed, which requires a lot of knowledge and common sense on their part. Unfortunately, a lot of politically appointed and locally elected judges are just politically connected, not legal scholars. And if they shirk their duties and just hand the mess of facts to a jury of 5-12 people who weren't smart enough to figure out a way to get OUT of jury duty, it's not surprising that the end result is a mess.
All that to say, when blaming lawyers for this mess, make sure you also blame clients, judges, jurors, politicians, and especially the voting public (or even moreso, the NON-voting public) that continually fail to fix what's obviously wrong.
I will acknowledge that exception, where the lawsuit is filed in the name of an imaginary person while the lawyer runs out and tries to find a poster child for their threatened BS class action, which they promise they won't file if you settle for a nominal amount less than your anticipated legal defense bill to have the lawsuit dismissed. That IS abusive litigation and those guys deserve to be punished.
We have a more complex legal system because you have more rights that can be trampled on. I'm not about to claim that the legal system is fair (I know that more money buys you more legal talent which increases your chances of winning), but there's more to it than "lawyers are evil." The clients on both sides are typically non-lawyers. You will almost never find a lawyer on a jury. So the people who file the frivolous lawsuits and the people who come up with the outrageous verdicts are NON-LAWYERS!!!!
This case should have been won by the defendant, but sadly that's what happens when you don't take these things seriously enough to stay on top of it. I know she had extenuating circumstances, but by not presenting her side of the story, the jury had "bad facts" and made "bad law."
Did I reply to the parent post or grandparent post? Or great-grandparent post? Were any of the uncle or cousin posts relevant?
The point (an aspect your AC post lacked) relevant to this discussion is that it's a cop-out to blame attorneys for the lawsuits that get filed today. Hopefully, this judgment will be set aside on appeal because the review was either a protected pure opinion or rhetorical hyperbole which a reasonable mind would not find defamatory. As the "grandparent" post pointed out, this will also hopefully backfire on the plaintiff by alienating her and making people not want to do business with her.
Contrary to popular opinion, lawyers don't run around filing lawsuits in their own names. They have clients. Clients are the ones who decide whether or not to sue. Might as well blame the post office for delivering junk mail. Maybe the problem isn't with lawyers, but with the people who hire them.
Not to be a dick, but you CAN be sued for defamation based on an opinion. The law recognizes something called a "mixed opinion", which is an opinion that implies you have knowledge to support your opinion that you're not sharing when you voice your opinion. You can then be sued over the facts IMPLIED by your statement of opinion.
As an attorney, let me assure you that the law of defamation is a train-wreck, both at the state and federal level. Federal courts have been modifying the defamation standard on an ad hoc basis since NYT v. Sullivan (1964), creating exceptions left and right without coming up with a well-thought-out standard for all cases.
As far as books getting more protection: not so. The critical standards are: 1) whether the person being defamed is a public figure, and 2) whether the statement relates to a matter of public concern. If so, the U.S. Supreme Court has indicated that the plaintiff must show that the statement was made with "actual malice" (knowing the statement was false or reckless disregard knowing the statement was probably false). But you can't always count on the court concluding that a public figure is a public figure or that a matter of public concern matters to anyone but you, so you need to be careful.
Also, some states (Florida included) don't recognize "truth" as a complete defense. At common law, if your statement harms the reputation of a private person, it is presumed to be false and it is your burden to overcome this presumption. But according to the Florida constitution, you not only have to prove your statement was true but also that it was made with "good motives" (an undefined term). Some states are even worse, requiring both "good motives" and a "justifiable end" when telling the truth. How ridiculous is that?
Honestly, I'm all for protecting someone's reputation from malicious lies, but if what they're saying about you is true, it's your own damn fault it ruins your reputation!
1. Dead or Alive Extreme Volleyball
2. Outlaw Volleyball
3. The Sims (1 and 2)
4. Psi-Ops (love throwing those baddies around with telekinesis)
5. World of Warcraft (it gives me warm fuzzies)
I completely agree about the Sims. There's something comforting about sitting on my ass, clicking to "wash the dishes" and do all the other chores I need to do in the real world, but lack the energy to tackle. It's mind-numbing (a virtue it shares with items 1 and 2 on my list).
The joke's going to be on all you people who "exercise" or do other things outside, especially when you find out the Apocalypse will be resolved by a prolonged tournament of Street Fighter II. You will SO be kissing our wide white asses that you won't spend eternity in the bowels of hell, thanks entirely to my wicked mastery of Ryu. If you ask nicely, maybe we'll let you hold the pail when we need a bathroom break.
The dialogue suggested that he knew what she was doing in the other room. Or maybe she's beauty AND brains (though I think getting her kid to do the techie stuff is the more plausible explanation)
That really was a great show! But that's the risk with unconventional shows like that: you run the risk of cancellation for being different. Hopefully, Heroes can avoid this fate.
I'm not going to complain about Heroes being an X-men ripoff as long as they don't paint on those lame costumes from each of the movies. How horrific were those?
And in fairness, I'm not sure you can say Heroes ripped off the evolution/mutation concept. If you want to go back, X-men "ripped it off" from Darwin. They COULD have claimed all the Heroes got their powers from toxic waste spills, but then they'd all be ripping off Daredevil. Maybe they could be aliens from other planets, bitten by radioactive insects, whose parents were killed in a mugging outside of an opera.
As a possible explanation (wish they gave no-prizes for this stuff), the hot chick's son was working on a busted logic board in the next scene. While Ali Larter may not be a computer genius, it's possible that her "son" is, thereby explaining why he would have Linux running on his mom's work computer.
Hackers: I personally love the psychedlic "data display" when he opens the "garbage file." I had no idea my recycle bin was so trippy (but then again, the entire system looked like it was on acid).
In fairness though (as has been repeated ad nauseum), the graphical representations in Hackers were symbolic, intended to convey ideas in the way that a UNIX text command could not. To draw on another piece of cyberlore, think of the metaphor-sheer in "In the Beginning Was the Command Line" - early graphical interfaces needed "Trash Bins" and "Folders" and "Word Processor/Typewriters" so it would be easier to grasp concepts, even though the metaphors weren't literal. However, the metaphors were only relevant to people who needed them for the translation; kids today know that a word processor is a software program that will not store data unless you save your file - they wouldn't have a clue what to do with a typewriter. So as more of the culture becomes familiar with how technology actually works, the less symbolic everything needs to be - the translation is unnecessary.
All that to say: if they made Hackers today, it'd be a lot less colorful.
This isn't really all that new. I think things like Lonelygirl (and going back to the Blair Witch Project (marketing disguised as authentic recorded experiences)) are making people more cynical about what they see in general. Every time I see something that looks "authentic" on YouTube (or anywhere else for that matter), I'm inclined to doubt its true source. Maybe it's better that, by finding out there's so much "fake" information out there, we don't just blindly believe everything we see. But in a way, it's also a sad commentary on what mass media and the marketing engine have done to the dissemination of true information for worthwhile purposes. I guess as long as there's a buck to be made.....
I've used the Guantanamo relocation service before, and their service sucks!!! They didn't get me to the right house and won't even tell me where all my stuff went!!! I'm filing a consumer report as soon as I get out of this cell!
As to the anonymity angle, I have a sneaking suspicion that decreasing the level of allowable anonymity online will result in a dramatic increase in the amount of identity fraud. Pick your poison....
Actually, one of my favorite parts of SWG was being a droid engineer. Admittedly, building droids requires excessive amounts of resources and weeks of time on your hands (and accordingly, you can't zip through the profession like so many others), but it was a neat experience.
Jump to Lightspeed is great because now I spend all my time in a flight simulator, racking up starfighter pieces to build ships on the new shipwright profession. I guess all this to say: SWG probably appeals more to people who want to explore the Star Wars environment, but aren't all about building an uber-character who can open a can of whoop-*ss on Darth Vader and single-handed slice-and-dice legions of stormtroopers, should we stumble across them.
I've actually been working on a project to make a legitimate use of peer-to-peer technology on behalf of aspiring artists. It's an idea still in development, but I've put together a website for the effort (called Distributed Development) at http://www.distributed-development.com. I just "launched" it last week and am looking for aspiring artists across the country and around the globe to collaborate on projects and make reputations for themselves. It uses peer-to-peer technology to distribute bandwidth costs among the user network, so large independently developed files can be shared without costing an individual server excessive bandwidth.
Another application I've seen is an article I received the other day, about the BBC using BitTorrent to distribute programming to viewers (http://www.hyperreal.org/~mpesce/fbm.html).
Slashdot Mirror
Honestly, even if it happened on national level, it wouldn't make the American electoral system any less of a farce. The prevailing opinion on this thread appears to be: let me say and show whatever they want, just don't let them call during dinner.
Two big words of warning: 1) This law is probably unconstitutional where political speech is concerned. Political speech is more protected than mere commercial speech, so while it may be able to stop sales call harrassment, it won't stop solicitations for political organizations. Also, it won't stop calls from companies with whom you have a pre-existing business relationship (i.e. your phone company), unless you specifically tell them (preferably in writing) that you do not want to be solicited in the future. 2) I've tried using this law to chase junk faxers and it is an enormous waste of time. You can catch the small-timer local advertisers (by suing them personally and joining the junk faxer, if you can find them), but the penny-stock faxes will keep coming through. Usually they're out of state and domesticating a local judgment to their home state and executing on it is near impossible. Not to discourage anyone, but this will not bring down the big junk fax/phone spammers (and depending on what you make an hour, may not be worth the time you invest in it).
Do you include the lawyer who defended you and your insurance company in this assessment? While the plaintiffs may have overblown their claims, let's not forget that your wife DID rear end them, so while the AMOUNT of compensation they were seeking may have been excessive, they WERE entitled to their day in court because they WERE harmed. And FYI: if you think the costs of arbitration were outrageous, you have no idea how expensive an actual trial is.
It's clearly distinguishable. Under NO circumstances is spamming justifiable; it's unsavory in every instance. But I think everyone can agree that not EVERY lawsuit is meritless. Think civil rights lawsuits.
I don't have any hard statistical data, but I would guess that compared to the total number of lawsuits filed every day in the entire country, those lawsuits are a very very very very small percentage.
As for sharing the responsibility, there are definitely lawyers out there who are filing completely meritless lawsuits, but our judicial system is lenient in allowing cases to go to trial so you can say you got your day in court, even if you eventually lose. If your claim is completely unsupported by the law (or a reasonable extention thereof) your lawsuit is meritless and your lawyer is ethically prohibited from filing it. But usually that's not the case. Also, the system is set up adversarially so your lawyer is fighting hard for your point of view.
I think a lot of the blame lies with judges and juries. The judge is supposed to control what cases go to the jury and how the jury is instructed, which requires a lot of knowledge and common sense on their part. Unfortunately, a lot of politically appointed and locally elected judges are just politically connected, not legal scholars. And if they shirk their duties and just hand the mess of facts to a jury of 5-12 people who weren't smart enough to figure out a way to get OUT of jury duty, it's not surprising that the end result is a mess.
All that to say, when blaming lawyers for this mess, make sure you also blame clients, judges, jurors, politicians, and especially the voting public (or even moreso, the NON-voting public) that continually fail to fix what's obviously wrong.
I will acknowledge that exception, where the lawsuit is filed in the name of an imaginary person while the lawyer runs out and tries to find a poster child for their threatened BS class action, which they promise they won't file if you settle for a nominal amount less than your anticipated legal defense bill to have the lawsuit dismissed. That IS abusive litigation and those guys deserve to be punished.
This case should have been won by the defendant, but sadly that's what happens when you don't take these things seriously enough to stay on top of it. I know she had extenuating circumstances, but by not presenting her side of the story, the jury had "bad facts" and made "bad law."
Did I reply to the parent post or grandparent post? Or great-grandparent post? Were any of the uncle or cousin posts relevant? The point (an aspect your AC post lacked) relevant to this discussion is that it's a cop-out to blame attorneys for the lawsuits that get filed today. Hopefully, this judgment will be set aside on appeal because the review was either a protected pure opinion or rhetorical hyperbole which a reasonable mind would not find defamatory. As the "grandparent" post pointed out, this will also hopefully backfire on the plaintiff by alienating her and making people not want to do business with her.
Contrary to popular opinion, lawyers don't run around filing lawsuits in their own names. They have clients. Clients are the ones who decide whether or not to sue. Might as well blame the post office for delivering junk mail. Maybe the problem isn't with lawyers, but with the people who hire them.
Don't blame me: I think it's stupid too!!
As far as books getting more protection: not so. The critical standards are: 1) whether the person being defamed is a public figure, and 2) whether the statement relates to a matter of public concern. If so, the U.S. Supreme Court has indicated that the plaintiff must show that the statement was made with "actual malice" (knowing the statement was false or reckless disregard knowing the statement was probably false). But you can't always count on the court concluding that a public figure is a public figure or that a matter of public concern matters to anyone but you, so you need to be careful.
Also, some states (Florida included) don't recognize "truth" as a complete defense. At common law, if your statement harms the reputation of a private person, it is presumed to be false and it is your burden to overcome this presumption. But according to the Florida constitution, you not only have to prove your statement was true but also that it was made with "good motives" (an undefined term). Some states are even worse, requiring both "good motives" and a "justifiable end" when telling the truth. How ridiculous is that?
Honestly, I'm all for protecting someone's reputation from malicious lies, but if what they're saying about you is true, it's your own damn fault it ruins your reputation!
1. Dead or Alive Extreme Volleyball 2. Outlaw Volleyball 3. The Sims (1 and 2) 4. Psi-Ops (love throwing those baddies around with telekinesis) 5. World of Warcraft (it gives me warm fuzzies) I completely agree about the Sims. There's something comforting about sitting on my ass, clicking to "wash the dishes" and do all the other chores I need to do in the real world, but lack the energy to tackle. It's mind-numbing (a virtue it shares with items 1 and 2 on my list).
The joke's going to be on all you people who "exercise" or do other things outside, especially when you find out the Apocalypse will be resolved by a prolonged tournament of Street Fighter II. You will SO be kissing our wide white asses that you won't spend eternity in the bowels of hell, thanks entirely to my wicked mastery of Ryu. If you ask nicely, maybe we'll let you hold the pail when we need a bathroom break.
Just as long as they aren't like the Wonder Twins (i.e. can only fly when holding hands).
The dialogue suggested that he knew what she was doing in the other room. Or maybe she's beauty AND brains (though I think getting her kid to do the techie stuff is the more plausible explanation)
You're right...I'm glad micro-organisms never learned how to fly or cover themselves in hardened shells. Those might be considered "superpowers."
That really was a great show! But that's the risk with unconventional shows like that: you run the risk of cancellation for being different. Hopefully, Heroes can avoid this fate.
And in fairness, I'm not sure you can say Heroes ripped off the evolution/mutation concept. If you want to go back, X-men "ripped it off" from Darwin. They COULD have claimed all the Heroes got their powers from toxic waste spills, but then they'd all be ripping off Daredevil. Maybe they could be aliens from other planets, bitten by radioactive insects, whose parents were killed in a mugging outside of an opera.
As a possible explanation (wish they gave no-prizes for this stuff), the hot chick's son was working on a busted logic board in the next scene. While Ali Larter may not be a computer genius, it's possible that her "son" is, thereby explaining why he would have Linux running on his mom's work computer.
In fairness though (as has been repeated ad nauseum), the graphical representations in Hackers were symbolic, intended to convey ideas in the way that a UNIX text command could not. To draw on another piece of cyberlore, think of the metaphor-sheer in "In the Beginning Was the Command Line" - early graphical interfaces needed "Trash Bins" and "Folders" and "Word Processor/Typewriters" so it would be easier to grasp concepts, even though the metaphors weren't literal. However, the metaphors were only relevant to people who needed them for the translation; kids today know that a word processor is a software program that will not store data unless you save your file - they wouldn't have a clue what to do with a typewriter. So as more of the culture becomes familiar with how technology actually works, the less symbolic everything needs to be - the translation is unnecessary.
All that to say: if they made Hackers today, it'd be a lot less colorful.
This isn't really all that new. I think things like Lonelygirl (and going back to the Blair Witch Project (marketing disguised as authentic recorded experiences)) are making people more cynical about what they see in general. Every time I see something that looks "authentic" on YouTube (or anywhere else for that matter), I'm inclined to doubt its true source. Maybe it's better that, by finding out there's so much "fake" information out there, we don't just blindly believe everything we see. But in a way, it's also a sad commentary on what mass media and the marketing engine have done to the dissemination of true information for worthwhile purposes. I guess as long as there's a buck to be made.....
As to the anonymity angle, I have a sneaking suspicion that decreasing the level of allowable anonymity online will result in a dramatic increase in the amount of identity fraud. Pick your poison....
Jump to Lightspeed is great because now I spend all my time in a flight simulator, racking up starfighter pieces to build ships on the new shipwright profession. I guess all this to say: SWG probably appeals more to people who want to explore the Star Wars environment, but aren't all about building an uber-character who can open a can of whoop-*ss on Darth Vader and single-handed slice-and-dice legions of stormtroopers, should we stumble across them.
Another application I've seen is an article I received the other day, about the BBC using BitTorrent to distribute programming to viewers (http://www.hyperreal.org/~mpesce/fbm.html).