Burton didn't want to do Planet of the Apes. That's why he so royally botched the ending -- he didn't want to do a sequel either. I was entirely ready to leave the theater after the spaceship took off, satisfied that my money, if not well spent, at least provided me with some escapism. But no, he had to make a point of destroying the ending. Even the movie industry knows their product sucks -- some of them go out of their way to make sure people know it. I give Tim Burton credit for having the guts to give people a one-finger salute during a blockbuster movie.
join them. Apply for a patent on sending commercial solicitations through electronic mail, then start suing spammers out of existence. For bonus points, send them your first C&D letter in an email entitled "Make BIG $$$ using teh p.a.t.e.n.t system!11!1!!!1 LOLOMGWTF"
It's not just poor grammar -- many high school graduates aren't as smart as 8th graders were 100 years ago. I guess kids these days aren't spending enough time looking at history books. Then again, who can blame them? Most of them would rather be catching up on public interest stories.
You make a number of excellent points. I enjoy the opportunity for mature discourse, even if I am biased by my misplaced sympathy.:)
I believe that one of the primary purposes of law is to encourage people to behave responsibly. Perhaps this belief is misplaced, or fallacious, but it seems a reasonable goal to hope for. It's also what all the professors keep reiterating -- draw your own conclusions. If our society enacts laws to this end, then it naturally follows that, in some sense, the laws attempt to 'coerce' us from doing what would otherwise come naturally, to divert us from a pure Lockean 'state of nature.' My own personal belief is that such unrestrained freedom is not conducive to forming societies, since one could wander around the streets killing at will. So we enact laws saying that you can't do that, and just as the state must follow its duty to protect us, we assume a duty to the state to obey its laws. Our motivation for enacting laws can be moral or religious, but our reasons for enforcing them are merely pragmatic.
Your argument about killing as act without intent is strong. I felt much the same way throughout the first few weeks of class. At some point, I began to see why mental state could be a useful factor in determining guilt. You might argue that I was just beaten down -- there is some truth in that.
On the other hand, I began to realize the importance of negligence. Negligence is all about having a standard of care, or a duty, towards others. There are various degrees of care, as well. A doctor is held to a higher standard, as you pointed out. How then do we keep "higher standards" in a system that penalizes equally based merely on the act, and not on the required duty?
Such a system holds everyone to an equal standard of care in their actions, regardless of their mental capacity or disability. And isn't that a standard of perfection, since one finds guilt for even a single mistake? I fear that it would harbor disincentives against people becoming professionals, if for no other reason than the economy would adjust for the removal of "professional liability" (i.e. malpractice) risk by responding with downward pressure on salaries.
I have another problem with strict act-based fault. A simple seizure while driving would require punishment which would fail utterly as a corrective tool. As a simple matter of policy, my opinion is that such a system is too close to eugenics, and I therefore reject it. You may, of course, feel otherwise.
Secondly, I might have miscommunicated my understanding of legal intent. There is no morality in intent. Morality is seen by the law as one possible motivating factor in making a decision to do a thing. Intent is the concentration of resources in conscious effort to do a thing, once it is decided it must be done. In brief, morality happens before a decision, intent afterward. Intent is proof positive that the decision to act has been made, regardless of the reason for acting. Finding evidence of intent, on the other hand, can be extremely challenging.
Next, you speak to (a lack of) judicial accountability. Judges are either appointed or elected. Some judges, the Article III judges, are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. These judges hold positions which must be free from attack, lest duress, coercion, or persuasion compromise their ability to adjudicate. If you have an argument against the Supreme Court, then I don't think anything further that I say will have much effect on this point. The rest of the judiciary are elected. The accountability for their actions is in your hands. When I voted on November 2nd, I selected which judges I thought were fit to continue their service, and which were not. I did extensive research beforehand, consulting ratings of judges and descriptions of judicial malfeasance from several different legal associations before making my choices. Elected judges (at least in my jurisdiction) require 60% approval rating each time a vote comes up, or they are not retained. It
They also seem to put a lot of stock in the "intent" of people on trial for their actions, which is a lot of malarkey, unless you're billing by the hour.
The reason for all the "malarkey" is that intent is a required element to prove a number of crimes, not least of which is murder. It is a law, passed by Congress, that "Murder is the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought." 18 U.S.C. 1111(a). Courts over the years have interpreted "malice aforethought" to mean the evil that the killer is thinking, i.e. his intent (to kill, to cause severe bodily harm, to cause a felony), or even what he isn't thinking (extreme recklessness). Intent is one of four elements needed to prove murder, the other three being conduct (the defendant pulling a trigger), death of a human being, and causation (the person died because the defendant pulled the trigger).
If you don't look at intent, all sorts of nasty things happen. Take the case of someone driving down the street who clips a pedestrian and kills her. Is it murder? Well, that depends: was the driver awake? Having a stroke? Was he escaping from a bank robbery he just took part in? Did the driver know the pedestrian? Did the driver just want to injure her, but not kill her? Was he yelling at his kids in the back seat? Was he just fired by his female boss, whom he spots in the crosswalk? What about if it's his wife kissing another man? What if the woman is pointing a gun at him? All of these questions go to what was on the killer's mind at the time of the killing, and they make the difference between murder, manslaughter, and acquittal.
To finish off this point, the facts of every case are different. That's why lawyers spend so much time trying to figure out intent: not because they're billing by the hour (look at public defenders), but because every time they have to start from scratch.
DNA, hair, urine, is even closer to the "person", and clearly (to me) indivisible from it.
Lawyers have to differentiate all the time between objective evidence and subjective evidence. DNA, urine, and hair is objective: there it is. Tests on it can be flawed, but they can be performed many times on the same sample, and eventually an objective result can be reached. Witness testimony, on the other hand, is about as subjective as it comes. Even if Kobe Bryant was 100 percent positive the sex was consentual, she didn't think it was. He said, she said. You'll never get the whole story out of testimony. The best you can do is put a bunch of people in the room and have them argue amongst themselves to figure out what really happened. Which is, in fact, the whole purpose of juries: to sort out the subjective evidence. If everything had a straight yes/no answer, you wouldn't need juries. You could have a computer decide everything. Unfortunately, that's just not the way things work.
As for the black boxes, it's pretty clear that they provide objective evidence. Which is why they won't be protected under the rationale of the Fifth Amendment. Keeping objective, this-is-what-really-happened evidence away from a jury is just plain dumb, unless there's some good policy reason for it. Like, as you pointed out, the fact that it was obtained illegally.
Vast sums of money and time go into splitting endless hairs, mapping fiefdoms of legal jurisdiction, and publishing often untestable legal theory.
I absolutely invite you to go down to your county courthouse one day and just sit and listen for awhile. It's a great experience. As for the splitting hairs, that's what needs to be done. Your municipality passed an ordinance. Did you violate it? It all depends on interpretation. And the facts of the case. And prior cases decided on similar facts, and how smart the lawyers are, and whether or not the law even applies to you (which side of the street was the car parked on?) (this is your jurisdiction complaint), and some
I grew up in Oak Ridge. If you think that a building dripping with radiation is bad, check out the Secret City scenic railway. Doesn't seem unusual, until you discover where the station is. For some real giggles, here's an excerpt from the bottom of the page:
Note: Due to additional security procedures following the events of September 11, 2001, the Secret City Scenic Excursion Train is currently boarding at the back gate of the East Tennessee Technology Park (ETTP), formerly known as the K-25 facility. This situation will continue until we are advised otherwise by security officials at ETTP.
Yes, folks, due to heightened security, we're having Joe Public board the train right next to the abandoned nuclear facility. You know, the one with radioactive barrels filled with Uranium scattered willy-nilly out in front.
Scary as all that sounds, I've actually been on the train ride. It's very pleasant, the rail cars are antiques, and the tour guide's history of Oak Ridge during WWII was interesting. (Checks rad badge again. No problems.)
It's a shame to see the old girl go down, really. She's done a lot in her time in "Happy Valley". K-25 was at one time the world's largest building. (For a sense of scale, have a look at the two-story townhouses at the bottom of the pic. If you look carefully, you'll see that the two buildings in the center are actually just one building.)
I absolutely agree, we should have a choice as to whether or not we carry our cell phones with us. I wager that an alarming number of/.ers work programming jobs that require them to be "on call" and have their cell with them at all times. Of course, you can choose to find another job...
As fas as having untrackable cell phones: I'm not sure that's possible. As long as you can be picked up by towers A and B but not C, they can triangulate you. If you can't be picked up by A and B, then the phone isn't going to be much use to you anyway. And cars can already be tracked by radar guns, as I said before. Installing a black box just means that you can be tracked 'more'. The real question people is, "where do we want to draw the line."
As you point out, many crimes are solved by tracking cell phones. This is generally a good thing, but as with everything else, there are boundaries drawn by conflicting public policies. On the one hand, we want to cut down crime as much as possible. On the other, we want to have our personal privacy and individual liberties. Security versus Liberty: it's one of the oldest arguments in the history of civilization. Radar detectors good, black boxes bad is a starting point, but there are good arguments to be made in either direction. As long as we continue to have the discussion, I'm confident that the system will sort itself out.
Disclaimer: I am a law student, but I haven't had Con Law yet. None of this is legal advice.
There's a reason you can be compelled to give DNA and other physical samples as evidence against you. See here for a more detailed explanation of why. Here's the executive summary:
You are absolutely correct quoting the Fifth Amendment. The courts are trying to fulfill the policy goal of making sure that witnesses aren't erroneously convicted of a crime. The phrase "witness against himself," obviously means that you shouldn't have to incriminate yourself with testimony. Even if you are innocent, however, you can still feel pressure in the witness box. If you stutter or 'choke', a jury could mistake that as a sign of guilt. On the other hand, DNA evidence, urine samples, and yes, data from a 'black box', don't have this problem. They represent hard evidence, and are much less likely to lie than you are. They can still be contested, like any evidence. Fingerprinting in particular has been called into question of late. Nevertheless, this sort of evidence doesn't fall within the narrow reading of "witness" in the Fifth Amendment, because it isn't being restricted by the same policy considerations. Therefore, you can be compelled to turn it over without running afoul of the Constitution.
There are privacy concerns to be sure. Of course, if you're speeding, then you're speeding. You're still in favor of cops arresting people using radar detectors, right? (Arguments about speeding being a victimless crime go elsewhere.) Somehow, it doesn't seem to me to make a difference whether the radar 'gun' is in his car or yours. Some of the arguments so far seem to be "oh shit, now I can't speed or I'll get into trouble." That doesn't impress me. The GPS tracking arguments are a little more worrisome, but not much more. You have a GPS or other location tracking system in your cell phone, right? You do take your phone with you in the car, don't you?
Actually, some of the essential algorithms used to implement MPEG-4 are patented. If you release a codec without paying license fees, they've got you by the short and curlies, no reverse engineering required.
Actually, it's very easy to write laws that talk about what someone ought to know. For example, if you're a parent with a sick child, you "ought to know" that your child needs medical attention. If they don't get it and die, you're guilty of manslaughter. See here for some Massachusettes cases involving religion, prayer healing, and dead kids. (Just so you know, Lisa Sheridan died from empyema, a complication of pneumonia that she got from strep throat. You heard right, strep throat killed her.)
One thing I do know is that the law is packed to the brim with references to the "reasonable person," who is level-headed, knows what they ought to do, and then does it.
Disclaimer: I am a law student. I am not authorized to practice law. The foregoing is not legal advice.
There's a great point here. A crime is a wrong against society: murder, rape, and theft mostly, but terrorism goes in there too. Think of a tort as a wrong against an unrelated individual, which is pretty much everything else that isn't a contract: think battery, false imprisonment, trespass, medical malpractice, nuisance, spilling hot coffee on your lap, rolling your friend's SUV, you name it. An important difference between the two is the target: one person, or everyone.
If you had to categorize spamming as a wrong against an individual or against society, which would it be?
Crimes carry jail terms: misdemeanors for up to a year, and felonies for more than a year. Even if spamming were a low grade misdemeanor, if you rack up enough counts, say one count per day of spamming, you'll be in jail forever. Even as little as one day per count means you spend as long in jail as you did spamming, which could easily be years.
No, but government intervention gave us seatbelt laws, speed limits, and motorcycle helmet laws. Not to mention the third brake light, child safety seat regs, smog inspections and emissions maxima, mandatory recalls, and any of about six hundred other governmental regulations I can think of off the top of my head. The requirements for brakes alone would scare the hell out of anyone with a shred of sanity. Adhering to all of these regs costs money, enough to make it prohibitively expensive to start a new car company.
Now imagine if they start imposing "seatbelt" laws on space travel to keep people safe.
Which would be really ironic, because Edison screwed Georges Melies out of a huge profit from Le Voyage dans la Lune, which is one of the seminal sci-fi / fantasy movies of the early 20th century.
Since they're using a health analogy, I'd translate it this way:
"The MPAA just went to the ER screaming that they're on death's door, suffering from a painful and spreading illness, but when the doctor asked them to point to where it hurts, they said 'I'm not going to tell you.'"
The Virginia statute defines explicitly how they count spams. To wit, Va. Code 18.2-152.3:1(B) reads:
A person is guilty of a Class 6 felony if he commits a violation of subsection A and:
1. The volume of UBE transmitted exceeded 10,000 attempted recipients in any 24-hour period, 100,000 attempted recipients in any 30-day time period, or one million attempted recipients in any one-year time period; or
2. The revenue generated from a specific UBE transmission exceeded $ 1,000 or the total revenue generated from all UBE transmitted to any EMSP exceeded $ 50,000.
It doesn't say here, and I'm too lazy to look it up, but I believe EMSP = "electronic mail service provider". The instant conviction was for three counts each.
Virginia interprets the sending, and not the receiving, of the emails as the criminal act.
Um. So if you read the Virginia statutes (which I can't get to right now, but are available here),
you will see that under Va. Code 18.2-152.3:1, spamming is a class 1 misdemeanor, unless it's in bulk or makes the spammer a certain amount of money, in which case it's a class 6 felony. You will also see that under Va. Code 18.2-10(f), each class 6 felony carries with it a minimum of one year and a maximum of five, a penalty of up to $2,500, or both. For those keeping score, three counts gets you 3-15 years and up to $7,500. Jaynes got right down the middle at 9 years, and DeGroot lucked out of jail but got the maximum fine.
As for rape: Va. Code 18.2-61(C) says that rape gets you five years to life. It also says that 10 year olds can commit rape, but the Commonwealth will have to do extra work to prove it. Va. Code 18.2-63 gets you a class 4 felony for CK with a minor between 13 and 15, unless it's by consent, then it's a class 6 felony if there's a three year age difference, or a class 4 misdemeanor if not.
To sum up: spamming is a maximum misdemeanor, unless you're a real sleaze, in which case it's promoted to a minimum felony. Sex with a minor gets you a middling felony (2 to 10 years and up to $100,000), unless it's consentual, then it's demoted to a minimum felony. In other words, bulk spamming AOL is the same to the state of Virginia as consentual sex with a minor. Maybe you don't like that, but that's the way the scale works.
P.S. Under Va. Code 18.2-370.2, if you have sex with a minor, you can't hang around schools. If only bulk spamming meant you couldn't hang around the Internet...
"People are lazy" isn't an argument that passports will be easier to forge. It's an argument that screeners will be more likely to accept poorly forged passports. Your argument goes to enforcement of the rules regarding passports, not construction of the passports themselves. On that point, I do agree that embedding RFID chips will make people less likely to actually open the passport and verify the information inside.
On the other hand, if you can't hire people to properly enforce your Homeland Security policies, then maybe you have bigger problems. The government does want to pay agents to read passports. If it didn't, they wouldn't be there right now. The government just doesn't want to pay them enough to keep them from doing something else which isn't so mind-numbingly boring. They can't raise the argument that "our agents don't want to do boring, repetitive tasks all day," because tough shit, that's protecting borders.
I have no illusions that manual passport checking will somehow disappear because of technological advances. You learn a thousand times more about someone from looking them over than you do from reading some text on a page and looking at a picture. Body language, posture, dress, mannerisms, accent -- all of these give you clues as to who this person is, where they're going, and what they plan to do when they get there. That's important security information, and if we want it, we're going to have to get it somehow. Buzzing your address thru the air doesn't give you any interesting information. It violates your privacy for no benefit.
I do believe RFID will make passports harder to forge. That seems clear enough. But why broadcast your name and address? Why not broadcast something like the passport number? Without looking at the info on the inside, they may be able to track you by number, but not get your name, address, or other personally identifying information without the kind of work that they'd have to do right now to get that information. In addition, countries could store databases of just the passport numbers that they want to watch (or pass thru), without the associate personal data. Everyone not in the database gets the standard interview questions.
You can use DVDs as drink coasters. I know I have. You can do whatever you want, under the First Sale Doctrine, short of violating any laws. But that's what we're talking about here, violating other laws. You think, as I do, that skipping commercials shouldn't be illegal. That's great. How do we make sure it shouldn't be illegal? By doing what the various trade industries are doing, talking to Congress.
They want us to watch their ads, so that they can mind-control us into buying their dreck. That's fine, it's capitalism. We don't want to watch their ads, because we didn't buy DVDs for the ads and we're not interested in buying their dreck. That's fine too. It's just simple tension between buyer and seller. My suggestion is that by not buying DVDs, we put pressure on the industry to listen to what we have to say. Sort of a distributed collective bargaining arrangement. You don't have to like my suggestion. If you keep buying their DVDs, I just want you to realize that you're giving them more money to buy politicians.
Who defines "reasonable"? There has always been a tension between buyer and seller. Your point is that as the buyer, it's unfair that "reasonable" is being shifted out of your control. I agree. By saying "don't buy DVDs," I'm not ignoring the problem. I'm attempting to shift the power back to the buyer by suggesting a method of driving down the seller's profits. After all, that's the only thing they will listen to.
As far as playing by their rules, I'm sure most people misunderstand me. There is a fundamental ignorance in this country, and perhaps elsewhere, that those who create technology control it. That's pure and utter bull. For the most obvious example, look at nuclear bombs. None of the scientists who built the most destructive weapon in history actually controlled who knew about it, used it, how it was used, or whether it even should be used. They were a hell of a lot smarter than you or me, and they still didn't control it. Same goes with software, hardware, the Internet, and any other technology. It's a fact of life, not subject to Socialist or Democratic idealism. Before we can have a productive discussion about the future of the control of technology, people need to wake up to that fact. It's "their rules" until we do.
[flame]
It's not the legal system that's to blame, it's the laws that are being passed. The system works fine, has for hundreds of years. We, as Americans, are too fucking lazy, we want everything done for us. The vast majority don't want any personal responsibility. So we are willing to give power to any schmuck who we think will do all the heavy lifting for us and who we can feel righteous blaming when things go badly.
Blame Bush for the war on Iraq? The blame is ours for electing him. Blame Congress for the PATRIOT Act? The blame is ours for electing politicians who would endorse it.
I'm pointing my finger at all of us for having piss-poor civic behavior, and for not living up to the standard set by our forefathers.
[/flame]
Two things about tort claims that result in millions of dollars. First, the big bucks in a case is assessed as a punishment, specifically to make an example. One of the whole points of having Law in the first place is to encourage responsible behavior. Second, the money usually comes from some megacorp with deep pockets. Since juries almost always sympathize with The Little Guy, blame the jury (i.e., your peers) for not taking long-term externalities into account when they give six Bajillion dollars to someone who probably doesn't deserve nearly that much.
Lastly, to get back on topic, the broken patent and copyright laws are just a reflection of our greater problem: electing dopes, con men, and sycophants who make uninformed decisions. If we want change, let's elect those who will make that change. Let's elect people, like Richard Boucher, who understand and fight for the Good Guys. November 2nd is the one day we get every four years to do that. Let's really seize this opportunity.
Skopje and Ouagadougou are the capitals of Macedonia and Burkina Faso, respectively. Kazakhstan is a country. There are two Congos: the Republic of the Congo (formerly French Middle Congo), and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which lies just to the east. Eastern DROC borders Rwanda, where there was a massive genocide 10 years ago.
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Try "sex". ... Heh, that's funny on a lot of levels.
Burton didn't want to do Planet of the Apes. That's why he so royally botched the ending -- he didn't want to do a sequel either. I was entirely ready to leave the theater after the spaceship took off, satisfied that my money, if not well spent, at least provided me with some escapism. But no, he had to make a point of destroying the ending. Even the movie industry knows their product sucks -- some of them go out of their way to make sure people know it. I give Tim Burton credit for having the guts to give people a one-finger salute during a blockbuster movie.
join them. Apply for a patent on sending commercial solicitations through electronic mail, then start suing spammers out of existence. For bonus points, send them your first C&D letter in an email entitled "Make BIG $$$ using teh p.a.t.e.n.t system!11!1!!!1 LOLOMGWTF"
It's not just poor grammar -- many high school graduates aren't as smart as 8th graders were 100 years ago. I guess kids these days aren't spending enough time looking at history books. Then again, who can blame them? Most of them would rather be catching up on public interest stories.
I believe that one of the primary purposes of law is to encourage people to behave responsibly. Perhaps this belief is misplaced, or fallacious, but it seems a reasonable goal to hope for. It's also what all the professors keep reiterating -- draw your own conclusions. If our society enacts laws to this end, then it naturally follows that, in some sense, the laws attempt to 'coerce' us from doing what would otherwise come naturally, to divert us from a pure Lockean 'state of nature.' My own personal belief is that such unrestrained freedom is not conducive to forming societies, since one could wander around the streets killing at will. So we enact laws saying that you can't do that, and just as the state must follow its duty to protect us, we assume a duty to the state to obey its laws. Our motivation for enacting laws can be moral or religious, but our reasons for enforcing them are merely pragmatic.
Your argument about killing as act without intent is strong. I felt much the same way throughout the first few weeks of class. At some point, I began to see why mental state could be a useful factor in determining guilt. You might argue that I was just beaten down -- there is some truth in that. On the other hand, I began to realize the importance of negligence. Negligence is all about having a standard of care, or a duty, towards others. There are various degrees of care, as well. A doctor is held to a higher standard, as you pointed out. How then do we keep "higher standards" in a system that penalizes equally based merely on the act, and not on the required duty?
Such a system holds everyone to an equal standard of care in their actions, regardless of their mental capacity or disability. And isn't that a standard of perfection, since one finds guilt for even a single mistake? I fear that it would harbor disincentives against people becoming professionals, if for no other reason than the economy would adjust for the removal of "professional liability" (i.e. malpractice) risk by responding with downward pressure on salaries.
I have another problem with strict act-based fault. A simple seizure while driving would require punishment which would fail utterly as a corrective tool. As a simple matter of policy, my opinion is that such a system is too close to eugenics, and I therefore reject it. You may, of course, feel otherwise.
Secondly, I might have miscommunicated my understanding of legal intent. There is no morality in intent. Morality is seen by the law as one possible motivating factor in making a decision to do a thing. Intent is the concentration of resources in conscious effort to do a thing, once it is decided it must be done. In brief, morality happens before a decision, intent afterward. Intent is proof positive that the decision to act has been made, regardless of the reason for acting. Finding evidence of intent, on the other hand, can be extremely challenging.
Next, you speak to (a lack of) judicial accountability. Judges are either appointed or elected. Some judges, the Article III judges, are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. These judges hold positions which must be free from attack, lest duress, coercion, or persuasion compromise their ability to adjudicate. If you have an argument against the Supreme Court, then I don't think anything further that I say will have much effect on this point. The rest of the judiciary are elected. The accountability for their actions is in your hands. When I voted on November 2nd, I selected which judges I thought were fit to continue their service, and which were not. I did extensive research beforehand, consulting ratings of judges and descriptions of judicial malfeasance from several different legal associations before making my choices. Elected judges (at least in my jurisdiction) require 60% approval rating each time a vote comes up, or they are not retained. It
The reason for all the "malarkey" is that intent is a required element to prove a number of crimes, not least of which is murder. It is a law, passed by Congress, that "Murder is the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought." 18 U.S.C. 1111(a). Courts over the years have interpreted "malice aforethought" to mean the evil that the killer is thinking, i.e. his intent (to kill, to cause severe bodily harm, to cause a felony), or even what he isn't thinking (extreme recklessness). Intent is one of four elements needed to prove murder, the other three being conduct (the defendant pulling a trigger), death of a human being, and causation (the person died because the defendant pulled the trigger).
If you don't look at intent, all sorts of nasty things happen. Take the case of someone driving down the street who clips a pedestrian and kills her. Is it murder? Well, that depends: was the driver awake? Having a stroke? Was he escaping from a bank robbery he just took part in? Did the driver know the pedestrian? Did the driver just want to injure her, but not kill her? Was he yelling at his kids in the back seat? Was he just fired by his female boss, whom he spots in the crosswalk? What about if it's his wife kissing another man? What if the woman is pointing a gun at him? All of these questions go to what was on the killer's mind at the time of the killing, and they make the difference between murder, manslaughter, and acquittal.
To finish off this point, the facts of every case are different. That's why lawyers spend so much time trying to figure out intent: not because they're billing by the hour (look at public defenders), but because every time they have to start from scratch.
DNA, hair, urine, is even closer to the "person", and clearly (to me) indivisible from it.
Lawyers have to differentiate all the time between objective evidence and subjective evidence. DNA, urine, and hair is objective: there it is. Tests on it can be flawed, but they can be performed many times on the same sample, and eventually an objective result can be reached. Witness testimony, on the other hand, is about as subjective as it comes. Even if Kobe Bryant was 100 percent positive the sex was consentual, she didn't think it was. He said, she said. You'll never get the whole story out of testimony. The best you can do is put a bunch of people in the room and have them argue amongst themselves to figure out what really happened. Which is, in fact, the whole purpose of juries: to sort out the subjective evidence. If everything had a straight yes/no answer, you wouldn't need juries. You could have a computer decide everything. Unfortunately, that's just not the way things work.
As for the black boxes, it's pretty clear that they provide objective evidence. Which is why they won't be protected under the rationale of the Fifth Amendment. Keeping objective, this-is-what-really-happened evidence away from a jury is just plain dumb, unless there's some good policy reason for it. Like, as you pointed out, the fact that it was obtained illegally.
Vast sums of money and time go into splitting endless hairs, mapping fiefdoms of legal jurisdiction, and publishing often untestable legal theory.
I absolutely invite you to go down to your county courthouse one day and just sit and listen for awhile. It's a great experience. As for the splitting hairs, that's what needs to be done. Your municipality passed an ordinance. Did you violate it? It all depends on interpretation. And the facts of the case. And prior cases decided on similar facts, and how smart the lawyers are, and whether or not the law even applies to you (which side of the street was the car parked on?) (this is your jurisdiction complaint), and some
Scary as all that sounds, I've actually been on the train ride. It's very pleasant, the rail cars are antiques, and the tour guide's history of Oak Ridge during WWII was interesting. (Checks rad badge again. No problems.)
It's a shame to see the old girl go down, really. She's done a lot in her time in "Happy Valley". K-25 was at one time the world's largest building. (For a sense of scale, have a look at the two-story townhouses at the bottom of the pic. If you look carefully, you'll see that the two buildings in the center are actually just one building.)
As fas as having untrackable cell phones: I'm not sure that's possible. As long as you can be picked up by towers A and B but not C, they can triangulate you. If you can't be picked up by A and B, then the phone isn't going to be much use to you anyway. And cars can already be tracked by radar guns, as I said before. Installing a black box just means that you can be tracked 'more'. The real question people is, "where do we want to draw the line."
As you point out, many crimes are solved by tracking cell phones. This is generally a good thing, but as with everything else, there are boundaries drawn by conflicting public policies. On the one hand, we want to cut down crime as much as possible. On the other, we want to have our personal privacy and individual liberties. Security versus Liberty: it's one of the oldest arguments in the history of civilization. Radar detectors good, black boxes bad is a starting point, but there are good arguments to be made in either direction. As long as we continue to have the discussion, I'm confident that the system will sort itself out.
There's a reason you can be compelled to give DNA and other physical samples as evidence against you. See here for a more detailed explanation of why. Here's the executive summary:
You are absolutely correct quoting the Fifth Amendment. The courts are trying to fulfill the policy goal of making sure that witnesses aren't erroneously convicted of a crime. The phrase "witness against himself," obviously means that you shouldn't have to incriminate yourself with testimony. Even if you are innocent, however, you can still feel pressure in the witness box. If you stutter or 'choke', a jury could mistake that as a sign of guilt. On the other hand, DNA evidence, urine samples, and yes, data from a 'black box', don't have this problem. They represent hard evidence, and are much less likely to lie than you are. They can still be contested, like any evidence. Fingerprinting in particular has been called into question of late. Nevertheless, this sort of evidence doesn't fall within the narrow reading of "witness" in the Fifth Amendment, because it isn't being restricted by the same policy considerations. Therefore, you can be compelled to turn it over without running afoul of the Constitution.
There are privacy concerns to be sure. Of course, if you're speeding, then you're speeding. You're still in favor of cops arresting people using radar detectors, right? (Arguments about speeding being a victimless crime go elsewhere.) Somehow, it doesn't seem to me to make a difference whether the radar 'gun' is in his car or yours. Some of the arguments so far seem to be "oh shit, now I can't speed or I'll get into trouble." That doesn't impress me. The GPS tracking arguments are a little more worrisome, but not much more. You have a GPS or other location tracking system in your cell phone, right? You do take your phone with you in the car, don't you?
Actually, some of the essential algorithms used to implement MPEG-4 are patented. If you release a codec without paying license fees, they've got you by the short and curlies, no reverse engineering required.
One thing I do know is that the law is packed to the brim with references to the "reasonable person," who is level-headed, knows what they ought to do, and then does it.
Disclaimer: I am a law student. I am not authorized to practice law. The foregoing is not legal advice.
If you had to categorize spamming as a wrong against an individual or against society, which would it be?
Crimes carry jail terms: misdemeanors for up to a year, and felonies for more than a year. Even if spamming were a low grade misdemeanor, if you rack up enough counts, say one count per day of spamming, you'll be in jail forever. Even as little as one day per count means you spend as long in jail as you did spamming, which could easily be years.
Now imagine if they start imposing "seatbelt" laws on space travel to keep people safe.
Which would be really ironic, because Edison screwed Georges Melies out of a huge profit from Le Voyage dans la Lune , which is one of the seminal sci-fi / fantasy movies of the early 20th century.
"The MPAA just went to the ER screaming that they're on death's door, suffering from a painful and spreading illness, but when the doctor asked them to point to where it hurts, they said 'I'm not going to tell you.'"
Virginia interprets the sending, and not the receiving, of the emails as the criminal act.
As for rape: Va. Code 18.2-61(C) says that rape gets you five years to life. It also says that 10 year olds can commit rape, but the Commonwealth will have to do extra work to prove it. Va. Code 18.2-63 gets you a class 4 felony for CK with a minor between 13 and 15, unless it's by consent, then it's a class 6 felony if there's a three year age difference, or a class 4 misdemeanor if not.
To sum up: spamming is a maximum misdemeanor, unless you're a real sleaze, in which case it's promoted to a minimum felony. Sex with a minor gets you a middling felony (2 to 10 years and up to $100,000), unless it's consentual, then it's demoted to a minimum felony. In other words, bulk spamming AOL is the same to the state of Virginia as consentual sex with a minor. Maybe you don't like that, but that's the way the scale works.
P.S. Under Va. Code 18.2-370.2, if you have sex with a minor, you can't hang around schools. If only bulk spamming meant you couldn't hang around the Internet...
On the other hand, if you can't hire people to properly enforce your Homeland Security policies, then maybe you have bigger problems. The government does want to pay agents to read passports. If it didn't, they wouldn't be there right now. The government just doesn't want to pay them enough to keep them from doing something else which isn't so mind-numbingly boring. They can't raise the argument that "our agents don't want to do boring, repetitive tasks all day," because tough shit, that's protecting borders.
I have no illusions that manual passport checking will somehow disappear because of technological advances. You learn a thousand times more about someone from looking them over than you do from reading some text on a page and looking at a picture. Body language, posture, dress, mannerisms, accent -- all of these give you clues as to who this person is, where they're going, and what they plan to do when they get there. That's important security information, and if we want it, we're going to have to get it somehow. Buzzing your address thru the air doesn't give you any interesting information. It violates your privacy for no benefit.
I do believe RFID will make passports harder to forge. That seems clear enough. But why broadcast your name and address? Why not broadcast something like the passport number? Without looking at the info on the inside, they may be able to track you by number, but not get your name, address, or other personally identifying information without the kind of work that they'd have to do right now to get that information. In addition, countries could store databases of just the passport numbers that they want to watch (or pass thru), without the associate personal data. Everyone not in the database gets the standard interview questions.
Everything you wanted to know about the space shuttle, but were afraid to ask.
They want us to watch their ads, so that they can mind-control us into buying their dreck. That's fine, it's capitalism. We don't want to watch their ads, because we didn't buy DVDs for the ads and we're not interested in buying their dreck. That's fine too. It's just simple tension between buyer and seller. My suggestion is that by not buying DVDs, we put pressure on the industry to listen to what we have to say. Sort of a distributed collective bargaining arrangement. You don't have to like my suggestion. If you keep buying their DVDs, I just want you to realize that you're giving them more money to buy politicians.
As far as playing by their rules, I'm sure most people misunderstand me. There is a fundamental ignorance in this country, and perhaps elsewhere, that those who create technology control it. That's pure and utter bull. For the most obvious example, look at nuclear bombs. None of the scientists who built the most destructive weapon in history actually controlled who knew about it, used it, how it was used, or whether it even should be used. They were a hell of a lot smarter than you or me, and they still didn't control it. Same goes with software, hardware, the Internet, and any other technology. It's a fact of life, not subject to Socialist or Democratic idealism. Before we can have a productive discussion about the future of the control of technology, people need to wake up to that fact. It's "their rules" until we do.
No one has a right to FORCE you to buy the DVD, or to watch TV. If you buy their product, you play by their rules. Your choice -- make it a good one.
It's not the legal system that's to blame, it's the laws that are being passed. The system works fine, has for hundreds of years. We, as Americans, are too fucking lazy, we want everything done for us. The vast majority don't want any personal responsibility. So we are willing to give power to any schmuck who we think will do all the heavy lifting for us and who we can feel righteous blaming when things go badly.
Blame Bush for the war on Iraq? The blame is ours for electing him. Blame Congress for the PATRIOT Act? The blame is ours for electing politicians who would endorse it.
I'm pointing my finger at all of us for having piss-poor civic behavior, and for not living up to the standard set by our forefathers.
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Two things about tort claims that result in millions of dollars. First, the big bucks in a case is assessed as a punishment, specifically to make an example. One of the whole points of having Law in the first place is to encourage responsible behavior. Second, the money usually comes from some megacorp with deep pockets. Since juries almost always sympathize with The Little Guy, blame the jury (i.e., your peers) for not taking long-term externalities into account when they give six Bajillion dollars to someone who probably doesn't deserve nearly that much.
Lastly, to get back on topic, the broken patent and copyright laws are just a reflection of our greater problem: electing dopes, con men, and sycophants who make uninformed decisions. If we want change, let's elect those who will make that change. Let's elect people, like Richard Boucher, who understand and fight for the Good Guys. November 2nd is the one day we get every four years to do that. Let's really seize this opportunity.
Skopje and Ouagadougou are the capitals of Macedonia and Burkina Faso, respectively. Kazakhstan is a country. There are two Congos: the Republic of the Congo (formerly French Middle Congo), and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which lies just to the east. Eastern DROC borders Rwanda, where there was a massive genocide 10 years ago.