But then again, Liberatarians foolishly believe markets are always efficient when they are not regulated (which is about as foolish and as proven to be false of any of eco 101 assumptions).
Which is of course one of the main reasons of their scheme being as stable and viable as communism, also full of patently false assumptions as to large-scale operation of societies and human nature.
Does ending social security mean we will have a load of poor people? maybe.
The point is really not if there would be poor people as a result. There already are plenty of poor people. The issue is what would happen to them after the termination of these programs. And for the answer to that question we do not have to go any further then a history book on the goings on in the 19th century. Or a Charles Dickens' novel.
there would be a system open for abuse on wages, but would labor take those abuses or simply demand a higher wage?
The patently false assumption being, of course, the fact that labour lacks the mobility necessary to escape such conditions. People cannot simply uproot their entire communities to escape an abusve mega-company who happened to become, through mergers and acquisitions for example, the main, if not only, employer in the area. Next thing you know, the scrip and the "company stores" would be back in fashion.
As soon as you start making the argument that markets are inefficient(which you do), Liberatarian view points become invalid.
Yes indeed. It is quite trivial to demonstrate a long list of common real-life conditions under which "free markets" break down, even in the absence of any governmental influences. However I find that libertarians seem to be concerned about "force" or breakage of "free-market" in regards only to governments, Any use of economic force or breakage caused by individuals or other conditions seem to not bother them at all. I think many libertarians are simply government-haters and use their "ideology" as a smoke screen for their hatred of any kind of authority, irrespective of how useful to the society that authority is.
I'm with libertarians in that I believe in a minimal government that should primarily serve to protect the rights of individuals.
Well, that is because a maximum-bang-for-the-buck government, achieving its purpose with minimum possible intrusion in people's lives and with maximum possible controls and checks over its power is basically the only sane approach to a decent governance. Libertarians merely love to pretend that it is their idea and then proceed to take it well beyond all sane, empirically and historically established limits.
Also a serious discussion is immediately due about what are these "rights" individuals have. I would, as most other Social Democrats, posit that access to medical care and education allowing those born into unfortunate circumstances to escape them, thus creating some resemblance of social justice, are amongst these rights. Libertarians on the other hand seem to be far more concerned about their right to hoard things and to keep all others away from their loot. Well being of society and its individuals are supposed to somehow magically flow from that "liberty", to satisfy one's greed, which seems to be the main pillar of their whole world-view.
You mean, like a CEO getting a 400% higher wage than the poor slob who actually produces the wealth?
That is a clear indication of breakage in the supposedly capitalist system. Any de-coupling of an individual's "merit" to society and the rewards he receives is a failure of the free marketplace. Most Japanese companies' CEOs, for example, earn 10 times the median worker's salary. Not that the Japanese marketplace is by any means ideal, far from it, but it gives a clear indication that 10-fold increase in wealth is plenty enough of incentive for someone to manage successfully a very large company.
Wealth isn't produced by the rich; it's produced for the rich, usually by the poor. The rich don't create wealth, they aggregate it.
Actually it is much more complicated then that. The ways in which wealth is distributed are many and varied, and indeeed apparently easily subverted by some for their own benefit. The whole purpose of various economic schemes is to impede such subversion and to couple societal merit and wealth.
I was in a bar one night and there was a businessman (who was ironically calling for "family values"; what a hypocrite) stating that an employer doesn't owe his employees a living. "Nobody owes you a living, you have to earn a living." I'm thinking, "huh?" as well as "The worker is WORKING. He's producing YOUR wealth, asshole, a decent living is the LEAST you owe him."
Most of American business class has absolutely no clue what keeps it operating. Capitalism has become a form of religion for them instead of a useful, but imperfect and very limited in its scope economic tool. They use its theoretical ability to aid a meritocratic society as a "proof" that their own societal position is the result of their, and only their, "hard work". Everyone else is a "socialist freeloder bum" who should be grateful for the scraps from their tables. A sickening and ultimately self-destructive attitiude.
In general, I like what you said but not sure about this comment. I always thought that communism works well only in small communities, because in a communist system, you are working for the community.
That might be true, but we were implicitely discussing nation-wide scenarios.
When that community becomes too big you get the situation that people cannot see the value in working hard for somebody elses benefit, or that people gain the opportunity to channel wealth to themselves without the community at large noticing.
Quite true. A lot of societal dynamics change drastically with the change of size of community and also types of communities (i.e. urban, industrial etc).
So yes, a communist super state could be a silly pipe dream, but communism itself is not.
Again, we were implicitely talking about national scenarios. In a very small community of like minded people a lot of systems become viable which are not viable on a large scale. Libertarianism might even work, although I suspect that it would be just as cruel to those born weak and disadvantaged on a small scale as it would be on a large one.
One of the things that capitalism seems to encourage is the 'me me me' pipe dream and you can see how communities all over the world are suffering because of that.
The reason capitalism is out-of control is because some wealthy demagouges managed to convince large numbers of people that it is a form of perfect-by-definition religion, to which all other aspects of society should be subservient, rather then an imperfect but practical economic system which could be employed, under controlled conditions, as a tool to manage economic interactions within a chaotic and wildy uneven group of individuals, many of whom are greedy, unscrupulous and anti-social.
The genius of capitalism is in its ability to set up a set of conditions which subvert cleverly these selfish, anti-social tendencies of individuals into producing results beneficial for the community. Its strength is in this stochastic method, which treats individuals as molecules of some hot gas. But its weakness is also in its stochastic approach as this model is impotent to address a very wide range of real-world societal issues. In my view, capitalist marketplace can function well if it is applied to the things where its tenets are clearly applicable and valid and with a specific set of boundaries preventing it from spinning out of control. That is to physical goods and labour oriented (i.e. no "intellectual property") industrial/merchant activities whereby a large (50+) number of competitors is maintained in every field of endevour and where further growth of individual companies as well as creation of unsustainable wealth disparities in the population is controlled via a steep progressive income taxation scheme.
Once you venture outside of that scope, an icreasing amount of intervention is necessary, corresponding to the increasing inapplicability of capitalist tenets and the increasingly greater inability of free-market methodology to address various issues.
For example: Healthcare. As I frequently point out, healthcare does not conform to free-market methodology as in many cases any aspects of competition and consumer choice are completely absent. A patient in cardiac arrest does not get to shop for the best surgeon. Thus in this, and many similar cases, no competiton and subsequently no free-market exists, preventing Healthcare from being subject to captialism. At least in any sane society.
Another example: News Media. As by now anyone should realise, the corporate profit motive of media organisations, combined with insanely uncaring attitude of regulatory bodies, produced an oligarchy of corporate propaganda conduits, whose main purpose is product placement aided by lowest-common denominator enterntainment. It apparently never crossed people's minds that the most profitable "news" media is the one which attempts to please whatever largest politically orient
The difference is that Communism requires constant use of force (to make people produce without getting individual reward for themselves and their loved ones).
Err, no. They do get their rewards, as food, shelter and what not. What you mean is that the amount of these rewards is not obviously and directly related to the quality and amount of their efforts, thus creating a situation in which the individuals do not see a benefit of harder work and thus removing the incentive to do so. No force is involved here. Rather, force was used to ensure compliance with various loosely related political aspects of various communism based tyrannies. You do forget, as most do, that communism is an economic rather then a political system and could, in theory, be paired with any political scenario, ranging from democracy to a statist tyranny. It so happened that the historical circumstances of emergence of communist states led to tyrannical dictators being the norm.
I do not defend communism as a workable system, as in my view it is a silly pipe-dream, but it irks me that people continuously use "communism" in lieu of "statism" or some such.
Libertarianism requires only occasional use of force (to deter and/or punish people who start conflicts by engaging in theft, assault, and fraud)
Yes, libertarianism trades the force wielded by the government for the force wielded by ultra-wealthy individuals. I am not quite sure where the "improvement" lies in this. At least the government can be, in theory, semi-controllable by those governed. Ultra-wealthy individuals on the other hand make a different set of labels come to mind: "nobility", "dynasties", followed by "feudal lords" and eventually, and inevietably, "tyrants" and "warlords".
So in Libertopia there would be no FDA, but you still couldn't falsely claim that the drug you're selling cures cancer, and if it had known negative side effects you would probably be liable if you didn't disclose them.
Which unfortunately is a reactive solution instead of preventive one.
This would likely give rise to one or more private certification agencies.
Ah yes, competing FDA-like entities, all trying to sell themselves to the highest bidder, creating swarms of mutually-conflicting "certificatons" and thriving on creating noise, confusion and pseudo-science, which allows them to avoid prosecution or loss of credibility with the public if caught. Sounds like a great improvement to me. Entities in whose interest is using media to discredit real science in favour of bogus voodoo tricks and other snake-oil hokum and busy dumbing down the public to create conditions of perpetual profit out of nothing. And why not? In libertarian society it is every man for himself. If he does not wise up he will soon become... a de-facto serf?! Wait I think I've seen this movie somewhere.
Count me as a libertarian that agrees with your statements
That makes you a rather rare specimen. For some whacky reasons, most libertarians seem to value liberties of corporations more then their own, and liberty of some few individuals to amass obscene amounts of wealth -- exceeding that of all inhabitants of whole other continents, far more then liberty from tyranny which such vast disparities in wealth inevietably produce. Go figure.
Most liberatarian principles would seem to rather say "My right to provide an unsafe work environment ends when you are no longer willing to foolishly work in such an environment and not demand much higher wages". The free market works if you protect competition in that view.
Except it does not. If the whole world was pretty much homogenous, where both labour and capital can move about with no restrictions, cultural, geographical or any other, and if there was no ways to create artificial barriers to competition (of which governmental influence is but one of many -- a fact libertarians studiously avoid discussing) then, perhaps, you would be right. As it stands, in real world conditions, the recipe you presented is the one for abuse and child labour. Which by the way was pretty much the case during the glory days of Industrial Revolution, when government regulation and interference was but non-existant and businessmen were allowed to do pretty much what they pleased. You should read some of the Charles Dickens' novels describing the goings on during his time.
There is no particular reason to believe a certain level of safety is the correct level of safety. What if I would put up with an unsafe environment for a higher salary? Why should your regulations impede that?
While I do agree that greedy fools should meet their respective, well deserved, self-inflicted and very painful ends, the problem is that other people would be soon in positions of having no choice but to work under these conditions, for the reasons outlined above. That also means child labour, in unsafe conditions, and since children have no capacity to make such decisions, which will pretty much devastate their lives, such things should not be allowed. At least in any decent society. Which is one of many reasons why visions libertarian utopias seem rather nightmarish to me.
It is usually those who are safe on the shore who pity those drowning in the sea, but I suppose a starved of oxygen, delusional brain would hallucinate that it is the sea that is rising and subsequently try to send condolences to those on dry land. Making the spectacle of desperate thrashing about, whizzing lasts gasps and grasping at straws all the more pitiful.
I'd really like to apologize for the actions of the presidential administration that put you in this predicament.
That is of course a thing quintessentially American, and even more so Republican: to see yourself as the navel of the universe, as the only actors in the grand scheme of things and the rest of us as mere props for your stage theatrics. Coincidentally, an attitude indistinguishable from that of a 6-year old child. And equally as wise and realistic.
I'd really like to apologize for the actions of the presidential administration that put you in this predicament. If Polk had been a little more serious about "54'40 or fight" then...
Then probably the White House would have burned down, again. Such is the nature of wars of conquest. They tend to turn on you. For more information see: Vietnam or Iraq.
you might not be stuck in a country where you spend 6 months of the year working to support the government and all its wonderful social programs
I am very happy here, but thank you for your deep concern for my money. That is so unbelievably kind of "conservatives" or "libertarians" to be always so graciously concerned about other people's, and in particular my, money. Such an altruistic, selfless attitude brings a tear to my eye.
Also, for your information, the taxation burden in Canada is below the average of all of the industrialised world, all of which, naturally, being not American, does not measure up to your standard of perfection: that of your own rear end. More curiously, the US, which you seem to imply being far superior in this regard for an average individual, is nearly indistinguishable from Canada. Funny things happen when you do not include billionaires and corporations in your statistics, don't they?
Add to this the fact that such a worker receives but a fraction of the services the Canadian government provides. But boy, has he got a shiny, gizmo-laden, whiz-bang army for his buck! Too bad that some bearded goofuses in towels with AK-47s and Victorian-era rifles have got it all bogged down in some place far away. It would seem that infinite, self-righteous, sanctimonious hubris has its downsides.
where the per capita GDP is only 3/4th that of your neighbor to the south
And curiously, Sweden, Norway, Luxembourg, Denmark and Iceland, all dens of socialist ways of thinking beat USA in this department handsomely. Perhaps our problem is that we are too much like the USA and not enough like Sweden or Iceland in our social and economic policies.
and where you have to put up with snooty people who think they're still in France.
As opposed to snooty Americans in Alberta who think they're still in Texas?
Well...Polk might not have been able to do much about the quebecois,
That's quite unsurprising as he was not able to do much other then talk big. Which is quite typical of all those big-mouthed chickenhawks who you are so fond of over there.
but I'm reasonably sure that you'd be spared the embarrassment of calling your currency a "Loony."
I don't. Or more precisely, I do understand the intention, but it is plain to see that while it might have been semi-workable in the 19th century, the idea is fundamentally flawed.
It is entirely reasonable to protect an idea long enough for a company to produce a product and start making money.
Not so. The claim is being made that patents "promote innovation". That is not true. Desire to learn in some areas and greed and competition in others "promote innovation". The concept of a patent, as an artificial stimuli for development has looong since outlived even the pretenses of its usefullness. The usual excuse, that of protecting "small time" inventor from predation by "large corporation", is also plainly false. Vast majority of patents are filed and held by various corporations, and the ones held by individuals are usualy crackpot.
Another argument for patents claims that they protect the company who invests into reasearch from "freeloading" by copy-cats. I say that such "copy cats" are precisely the engine of competition and the time lead afforded by the new design or discovery is reward enough in itself. It is even self-balancing: more complex the design, longer it will take the competition to copy it properly. Thus longer the exclusivity window. And only continuous research and development guarantees that lead over competitors to be permanent. As it should be. There is no need for an artificial bureaucratic nonsense to "protect", poor, downtrotten multi-billion corporations from each other.
And so now, Ladies and Gentlemen, you finally have a glimpse of the true, inevietable and logical implications of the notion of the so-called "Intellectual Property".
No, folks, this is not an abberrant perversion of law or politics. This is the true purpose, as intended, of IP. Utter and total control of information, including thoughts, basic arithmetics, integer numbers and lanugage constructs. Because, as I kept explaining over and over, all of these are mere forms and facets of the same thing: information. And once you allow "ownership", however illogical that idea is, of information, the rest simply follows from there.
Why would I want subwoofers in a set of headphones when tons of well-designed models of headphones have already had ridiculously good low bass response (virtually flat resopnse down to 10 Hz) without subwoofers for decades?
That is because the actual drivers for the individual channels are much smaller as otherwise they would not fit in the cups. So in order to achieve a good bass response, a sub-woofer was needed, very much on the same principle as the "satelite" speaker systems.
But, of course someone will buy the things because they say "subwoofer" and "5.1" on them, even though the subwoofer isn't needed and most people have 2 ears rather than 5.1 of the
Apparently the effect is very pronounced, particularly in FPS games where things sneak behind you. In a regular 2D audio headset there is no distinction between front and back. Also, even though we have only 2 ears, apparently our brains are capable of quite sophisitcated DSP-like function and are able to tell the direction not only based on relative delay between ears but also on the changes of the sound characteristics as it is being reflected by the flesh of our ears, even though we are deprived of head-movement based analysis while wearing headsets.
Or you can try to go real fancy and get Turtle Beach HPA 5.1 channel gaming headset complete with actual miniature subwoofers in each cup + front/back and center channel speakers. Not to mention a removable boom mike and much better overall construction.
Ladies and Gentlemen, here we have the Literary School's version of the I Hate Bush platform. Shakespeare would be proud!
I would only wish so. I was rushed and therefore that is but a pale shadow of what my Opus Magnum could have been on this subject. Let's put it this way, it had singing pigs in it. You don't know what you missed!
I know this is a (rather weak) attempt to be funny, your "dude" is the clueless one
Not in the scenario as I wrote it, although yes it was weak as I was rushed having to do some work and I had no time for elaborate analogies on Slashdot.
1. (good) The "dude" to say LET'S GET THE PIG OUT OF THE HOUSE -- which your dude never does.
Again, he was not the one who put the pig there and the access to the house is controlled by Martin. The onus is primarily on him.
2. (better)You grab one end, and I'll grab the other.
Again, since Martin refuses to even acknowledge the problem, any prescriptions for its cure are moot.
Saying you hate Bush is easy, but that will not win an election. (Actually, given Bush's missteps, it finally might in this case, but typically it does not.) Democrats refuse to accept this; most keep talking as if hating Bush will be enough to get them into office.
I did not intend to defend the Democrats, I merely objected to Martin's way of putting things. In order to have positive solutions, one has to first admit that a problem exists.
These numbers are extreme to demonstrate the point, but that is why Bush can be so vilified and yet win. Even if *every* undecided votes for (insert Democrat here), Bush can still win if he can just get 70% of his backers to show up at the polls. This the Republicans do, not to this degree, but just enough. The result is that you can have a President *hated* by a large portion of the population and still get comfortably re-elected.
You are correct that voter apathy is one of the devastating diseases destroying the democratic process. But again, I merely objected to Martin's funky ways, and not this, and many other possible angles of analysis.
The lesson for your "dude" is that as long as we have such high voter apathy, we are going to get exactly what we deserve -- polarizing Presidents who are loved by their base and hated most everywhere else. 60% of the population may see a pig in the White House, but they do not care enough to get him out.
Well, we don't know what they see, but the step #1 will be always to make them aware of the porky trepidation, as one cannot fix problems without first acknowledging them first.
Maybe you prefer standing on the sidelines feeling superior to the woo-woos, but a rational "dude" who actually wants to change things might think it time to try something different.
I am a Canadian and my options in this regard are limited to dispatching witty repartes on Slashdot.
The GP post was trying to tell you what could work to get *him* to vote. Feel free to disregard his advice. In fact, feel free to keep doing the same thing, and keep on losing. It's (y)our choice.
I am afraid that is not so. The GP was merely going through his List A of excuses. Should the Democrats match those, he would have proceeded onto the List B. I can tell so with certainty because the GP refused to even acknowledge that the problem exist and yet he demanded that the other side produces positive proposals. A dead giveway.
What I'm not willing to listen to is, "George Bush is a big liar and he's destroyed the country and that's a bad thing!" My response to people who come up with these kinds of lines is usually, "OK, what specifically is wrong, and how would you fix it?" The usual response to this is that he's a liar and he's destroyed the country and he needs to be removed. That's not a platform. That's a statement of hatred for the man, and it does nothing to address the issues that need to be addressed.
A dude: Hey, Martin, there is a pig in your living room. It escaped from the pig farm and somehow got into your house.
Martin Blank: So what? I am not willing to listen to "Its a pig!". You need to come up with what is specifically wrong and make a viable plan!
A dude: Err, you are not listening, there is a PIG in your living room, it tracked mud and feces in and is now urinating on your carpet!
Martin Blank: That is merely a statement of hatred for pigs. That is not a platform.
A dude: Man, what is wrong with you? Don't you care for your home? Look, the pig just smashed your TV and is now chewing on your drapes.
Martin Blank: You are not addressing the issues that need to be addressed.
A dude: There goes your sofa!
Martin Blank: You are just attempting to sway me by your "I am not a pig" stance. It wont work.
A dude: I am talking to a woo-woo. I am outa here.
Martin Blank: And that is a prime example of partisan bickering. We might not all agre on... *trailes off in the distance, interrupted only by loud noises of things breaking and smashing in a house he is standing next to *
If you get caught speeding while driving to work, do you get worried that your employer is going to get fined because you broke the law?
The distinction is that when you are driving to work in your private car, you are not doing so in your official capacity as an employee (until you arrive there or if you are driving a company vehicle). If you are driving a company vehicle, during work hour, as part of your job, it is in fact quite likely that the company might be fined and its insurance rates go up. For this reason, many vehicle insurance plans have provisions for "business" use of employee's passenger vehicles, to allow for such extra fines.
Meaning (drumroll please...) he must have performed those actions as an individual, not as the owner of an ISP. This isn't that hard to understand...
That is why ISPs, and in fact no other companies at all, can be held accountable for absolutely anything, because the genius nwbvt has decided that only "people" perform actionable activities, such as writing hate articles, and there is no such thing as "shared responsibility" in nwbts' world of wonderful and wacky "logic". And, according to him, since every company under the sun is composed of people, there is no way for the company itself to be seen as doing anything, ever. So if, for example, an owner and a CEO of a company, during his official duties, fleeces the public out of millions, placing them in the company's account (very much as a white supremacist would use an "ISP" he controls to try to shield himself from responsibility for his screeds), the prosecutors can only go after his personal account, since, according to the master logician nwbt, the company itself is a sacred cow and not responsible for such activities, under any conceivable circumstances (or perhaps only when nwbt farts in an appropriate direction, on his personal and arbitrary discretion - after all, he is setting the rules of "logic" here, doesn't he?). Surely, it is only people who do things, not companies, and besides, nwbt was planning to use his own company to stash his loot away and so he would be very crossed at the thought of his grand scheme being somehow imperfect.
As I said, go bother someone else with your "logic".
Why stick with software only? Try "Xerox", "Blackberry", "Walkman", "iPod" or even the old-fashioned "Mercedes" or "BMW". None of these convey anything about the respective products, yet are widely recognised and immediately associated with consumer items names.
You made a 'pre-emptive' OT remark. But don't throw a hissy fit when I defend myself against the only rational interpretation of that remark in the context it was given.
You are not "defending" yourself against anything. You are persistently on the attack here, trying to drive home your pet peeve, which is the very thing I was attempting to ward against with my remark. I guess I should have spelled it explictely in large bold letters for those slow in comprehension but fast with delusional axes to grind.
Ok, you simply do not know enough knowledge of the IT industry to know what an ISP does.
Ok, I get it. You are a dishonest prick with a chip on his shoulder. I am quite familiar with what normal, sane ISP's do, and the one thing they do not do is write articles for white supremacist sites. Go bother someone else. Goodbye.
I mentioned Canadian law specifically to pre-empt a long winded and completely irrelevant, but predictable, discussion on merits of the law itself in the light of the US constitution, human rights, George Bush and what not by the usual crew of freaked-out Americans. And while it worked with most, one can always expect to find someone who will insist on ignoring this, and many other repeated attempts to stop him from derailing the discussion onto his pet peeves, following which he will accuse me of going off topic.
Yes, thats what scares people. Instead of just fining him for posting that content in the context of a site owner, they also fined his company (which in the eyes of the law is distinct from the flesh and blood people who own it).
I see now that you are simply being dishonest in your insistance on pretending that you do not understand the issue. The company was fined for creating and operating the site, just like a person would. In the eyes of the law, a corporation is a person, who can be charged for the same activities a blood and flesh individual would, as a co-conspirator or a partner in crime. In this case for being a supremacist hate-monger. So unless you are an owner of an ISP who during his official duties creates and operates supremacist sites for his own amusement and who uses his official position to hide behind the company name, the ISP is in no danger. Which, judging from your continued attempts at distorting this situation into an industrty-wide scare, is propably too uncomfortably similiar to something you do. Otherwise you would not be so panicked and deseprate.
I was dismissing the mention of Canadian law as unimportant to this debate (I am arguing what should be legal, not what is legal), so yes, that statement was very relevant.
Again, the "validity" of the law itself has no bearing on the relationship of the white supremacist and the ISP in question, and the subsequent fines for both.
Are you sure about that? Does the law state that ISPs can only be fined if the owner of the site has also committed some other crimes? Or is the law being selectively applied based on other actions performed by the ISP's owner. I really don't care, my statements apply to either case.
My understanding is that the ISP in question got charged because it was the owner and operator of the site, as one of its officers, in his official capacity, created and operated the site and subsequently, in his official capacity, sought to conceal that fact during communication with the complaint lodger. In other words, there is no distinction in this case between the ISP and the white supremacist when it comes to operation of the site. They are equally culpable. But the company being legaly a "separate" entitiy got fined separately, even though in real life the company and its owner-operator were one and the same.
So do I. And which is totally irrelevant to the post I made, which dealt with the accuracy of the slashdot summary.
Yes, I know their lack of action when they were asked to remove the content was the basis for the fine. Thats what has everyone pissed off, requiring ISPs to remove content is censorship.
No, he was fined for being intricately involved in operation of the site and his handling of the complaint in that capacity while trying to use the ISP as a shield.
Are you now trying to imply he disagreed with the content?
Are you now trying to be obtuse? Or just incapable of grasping the difference between merely hosting and that of actually creating and operating the site in question?
Seperate fines were given for the actual posting of the material. He is recieving an additional fine as the owner of the ISP.
For his actions as an owner of that ISP. No other ISP has been so charged (and there were many such cases involving hate web sites already) and none will, unless, like in this case, they also happened to be deeply involved in the affair.
Please RTFA. While the other fines were censorship as well, this is the one that is really pissing everyone off.
No, everyone is pissed off because some Slashdotters love to fly off their handles at the slightest provocation. Nowhere in the story is the actual legal analysis of the decision in question, only the boasting and fist shaking of the not-so-neutral anti-hate-website crusaders who "warn" everybody and everyone about the coming pogroms they are about to conduct against "servers". Get a grip.
Furthermore, you were not simply pointing out that the owner of the ISP was a racist, you made a claim that this knowledge "changes the whole perspective on things".
It does so. From the perspective of fear of random bystander ISPs being targetted to that of a specific site opertor being targetted, under existing Canadian law.
This particular fine was not for expressing a particularly vile political position, it was for owning an ISP that hosted a website that expressed a particularly vile political position.
Not so. The boastful comments of the self-interested winning party claiming so aside, the judge was certain to take into the consideration both the ownership chain as well as the responses of the "ISP" in question to the complaints.
Knowledge that he shared the website's positions should do nothing to change any perspective.
He actually operated the website, which is a far cry from "sharing the opinion" of it.
Even if you agree that people who post this crap should be fined, his fine should have been limited to covering only what he said.
Which is precisely the case. He (while pretending to be the ISP) had rejected the complaints and pretended not to be affiliated with the site. He (is his capacity as the ISP) was fined for that activity.
So you are saying that this particular law allowing the government to fine ISPs that don't remove hate content will only be enforced against people society currently finds despicable?
No, what I am saying is that the Slashdot summary is misleading.
And that is supposed to make us think better of this ruling?
Yes. If the ruling matched the summary, its impact would have been much worse.
Yes, white supremists are assholes, and in a purely just world they would be hung from their balls and set on fire. But that doesn't mean we should throw out the free marketplace of ideas and use the government's force to shut up anyone we disagree with.
Again, this has nothing to do with my post. In fact I do not agree with the supposed wisdom of the present Canadian law in this regard. But that is irrelevant to the post you replied to.
Slashdot Mirror
Which is of course one of the main reasons of their scheme being as stable and viable as communism, also full of patently false assumptions as to large-scale operation of societies and human nature.
Does ending social security mean we will have a load of poor people? maybe.
The point is really not if there would be poor people as a result. There already are plenty of poor people. The issue is what would happen to them after the termination of these programs. And for the answer to that question we do not have to go any further then a history book on the goings on in the 19th century. Or a Charles Dickens' novel.
there would be a system open for abuse on wages, but would labor take those abuses or simply demand a higher wage?
The patently false assumption being, of course, the fact that labour lacks the mobility necessary to escape such conditions. People cannot simply uproot their entire communities to escape an abusve mega-company who happened to become, through mergers and acquisitions for example, the main, if not only, employer in the area. Next thing you know, the scrip and the "company stores" would be back in fashion.
As soon as you start making the argument that markets are inefficient(which you do), Liberatarian view points become invalid.
Yes indeed. It is quite trivial to demonstrate a long list of common real-life conditions under which "free markets" break down, even in the absence of any governmental influences. However I find that libertarians seem to be concerned about "force" or breakage of "free-market" in regards only to governments, Any use of economic force or breakage caused by individuals or other conditions seem to not bother them at all. I think many libertarians are simply government-haters and use their "ideology" as a smoke screen for their hatred of any kind of authority, irrespective of how useful to the society that authority is.
Well, that is because a maximum-bang-for-the-buck government, achieving its purpose with minimum possible intrusion in people's lives and with maximum possible controls and checks over its power is basically the only sane approach to a decent governance. Libertarians merely love to pretend that it is their idea and then proceed to take it well beyond all sane, empirically and historically established limits.
Also a serious discussion is immediately due about what are these "rights" individuals have. I would, as most other Social Democrats, posit that access to medical care and education allowing those born into unfortunate circumstances to escape them, thus creating some resemblance of social justice, are amongst these rights. Libertarians on the other hand seem to be far more concerned about their right to hoard things and to keep all others away from their loot. Well being of society and its individuals are supposed to somehow magically flow from that "liberty", to satisfy one's greed, which seems to be the main pillar of their whole world-view.
That is a clear indication of breakage in the supposedly capitalist system. Any de-coupling of an individual's "merit" to society and the rewards he receives is a failure of the free marketplace. Most Japanese companies' CEOs, for example, earn 10 times the median worker's salary. Not that the Japanese marketplace is by any means ideal, far from it, but it gives a clear indication that 10-fold increase in wealth is plenty enough of incentive for someone to manage successfully a very large company.
Wealth isn't produced by the rich; it's produced for the rich, usually by the poor. The rich don't create wealth, they aggregate it.
Actually it is much more complicated then that. The ways in which wealth is distributed are many and varied, and indeeed apparently easily subverted by some for their own benefit. The whole purpose of various economic schemes is to impede such subversion and to couple societal merit and wealth.
I was in a bar one night and there was a businessman (who was ironically calling for "family values"; what a hypocrite) stating that an employer doesn't owe his employees a living. "Nobody owes you a living, you have to earn a living." I'm thinking, "huh?" as well as "The worker is WORKING. He's producing YOUR wealth, asshole, a decent living is the LEAST you owe him."
Most of American business class has absolutely no clue what keeps it operating. Capitalism has become a form of religion for them instead of a useful, but imperfect and very limited in its scope economic tool. They use its theoretical ability to aid a meritocratic society as a "proof" that their own societal position is the result of their, and only their, "hard work". Everyone else is a "socialist freeloder bum" who should be grateful for the scraps from their tables. A sickening and ultimately self-destructive attitiude.
That might be true, but we were implicitely discussing nation-wide scenarios.
When that community becomes too big you get the situation that people cannot see the value in working hard for somebody elses benefit, or that people gain the opportunity to channel wealth to themselves without the community at large noticing.
Quite true. A lot of societal dynamics change drastically with the change of size of community and also types of communities (i.e. urban, industrial etc).
So yes, a communist super state could be a silly pipe dream, but communism itself is not.
Again, we were implicitely talking about national scenarios. In a very small community of like minded people a lot of systems become viable which are not viable on a large scale. Libertarianism might even work, although I suspect that it would be just as cruel to those born weak and disadvantaged on a small scale as it would be on a large one.
One of the things that capitalism seems to encourage is the 'me me me' pipe dream and you can see how communities all over the world are suffering because of that.
The reason capitalism is out-of control is because some wealthy demagouges managed to convince large numbers of people that it is a form of perfect-by-definition religion, to which all other aspects of society should be subservient, rather then an imperfect but practical economic system which could be employed, under controlled conditions, as a tool to manage economic interactions within a chaotic and wildy uneven group of individuals, many of whom are greedy, unscrupulous and anti-social.
The genius of capitalism is in its ability to set up a set of conditions which subvert cleverly these selfish, anti-social tendencies of individuals into producing results beneficial for the community. Its strength is in this stochastic method, which treats individuals as molecules of some hot gas. But its weakness is also in its stochastic approach as this model is impotent to address a very wide range of real-world societal issues. In my view, capitalist marketplace can function well if it is applied to the things where its tenets are clearly applicable and valid and with a specific set of boundaries preventing it from spinning out of control. That is to physical goods and labour oriented (i.e. no "intellectual property") industrial/merchant activities whereby a large (50+) number of competitors is maintained in every field of endevour and where further growth of individual companies as well as creation of unsustainable wealth disparities in the population is controlled via a steep progressive income taxation scheme.
Once you venture outside of that scope, an icreasing amount of intervention is necessary, corresponding to the increasing inapplicability of capitalist tenets and the increasingly greater inability of free-market methodology to address various issues.
For example: Healthcare. As I frequently point out, healthcare does not conform to free-market methodology as in many cases any aspects of competition and consumer choice are completely absent. A patient in cardiac arrest does not get to shop for the best surgeon. Thus in this, and many similar cases, no competiton and subsequently no free-market exists, preventing Healthcare from being subject to captialism. At least in any sane society.
Another example: News Media. As by now anyone should realise, the corporate profit motive of media organisations, combined with insanely uncaring attitude of regulatory bodies, produced an oligarchy of corporate propaganda conduits, whose main purpose is product placement aided by lowest-common denominator enterntainment. It apparently never crossed people's minds that the most profitable "news" media is the one which attempts to please whatever largest politically orient
Err, no. They do get their rewards, as food, shelter and what not. What you mean is that the amount of these rewards is not obviously and directly related to the quality and amount of their efforts, thus creating a situation in which the individuals do not see a benefit of harder work and thus removing the incentive to do so. No force is involved here. Rather, force was used to ensure compliance with various loosely related political aspects of various communism based tyrannies. You do forget, as most do, that communism is an economic rather then a political system and could, in theory, be paired with any political scenario, ranging from democracy to a statist tyranny. It so happened that the historical circumstances of emergence of communist states led to tyrannical dictators being the norm.
I do not defend communism as a workable system, as in my view it is a silly pipe-dream, but it irks me that people continuously use "communism" in lieu of "statism" or some such.
Libertarianism requires only occasional use of force (to deter and/or punish people who start conflicts by engaging in theft, assault, and fraud)
Yes, libertarianism trades the force wielded by the government for the force wielded by ultra-wealthy individuals. I am not quite sure where the "improvement" lies in this. At least the government can be, in theory, semi-controllable by those governed. Ultra-wealthy individuals on the other hand make a different set of labels come to mind: "nobility", "dynasties", followed by "feudal lords" and eventually, and inevietably, "tyrants" and "warlords".
Which unfortunately is a reactive solution instead of preventive one.
This would likely give rise to one or more private certification agencies.
Ah yes, competing FDA-like entities, all trying to sell themselves to the highest bidder, creating swarms of mutually-conflicting "certificatons" and thriving on creating noise, confusion and pseudo-science, which allows them to avoid prosecution or loss of credibility with the public if caught. Sounds like a great improvement to me. Entities in whose interest is using media to discredit real science in favour of bogus voodoo tricks and other snake-oil hokum and busy dumbing down the public to create conditions of perpetual profit out of nothing. And why not? In libertarian society it is every man for himself. If he does not wise up he will soon become ... a de-facto serf?! Wait I think I've seen this movie somewhere.
That makes you a rather rare specimen. For some whacky reasons, most libertarians seem to value liberties of corporations more then their own, and liberty of some few individuals to amass obscene amounts of wealth -- exceeding that of all inhabitants of whole other continents, far more then liberty from tyranny which such vast disparities in wealth inevietably produce. Go figure.
Except it does not. If the whole world was pretty much homogenous, where both labour and capital can move about with no restrictions, cultural, geographical or any other, and if there was no ways to create artificial barriers to competition (of which governmental influence is but one of many -- a fact libertarians studiously avoid discussing) then, perhaps, you would be right. As it stands, in real world conditions, the recipe you presented is the one for abuse and child labour. Which by the way was pretty much the case during the glory days of Industrial Revolution, when government regulation and interference was but non-existant and businessmen were allowed to do pretty much what they pleased. You should read some of the Charles Dickens' novels describing the goings on during his time.
There is no particular reason to believe a certain level of safety is the correct level of safety. What if I would put up with an unsafe environment for a higher salary? Why should your regulations impede that?
While I do agree that greedy fools should meet their respective, well deserved, self-inflicted and very painful ends, the problem is that other people would be soon in positions of having no choice but to work under these conditions, for the reasons outlined above. That also means child labour, in unsafe conditions, and since children have no capacity to make such decisions, which will pretty much devastate their lives, such things should not be allowed. At least in any decent society. Which is one of many reasons why visions libertarian utopias seem rather nightmarish to me.
It is usually those who are safe on the shore who pity those drowning in the sea, but I suppose a starved of oxygen, delusional brain would hallucinate that it is the sea that is rising and subsequently try to send condolences to those on dry land. Making the spectacle of desperate thrashing about, whizzing lasts gasps and grasping at straws all the more pitiful.
I'd really like to apologize for the actions of the presidential administration that put you in this predicament.
That is of course a thing quintessentially American, and even more so Republican: to see yourself as the navel of the universe, as the only actors in the grand scheme of things and the rest of us as mere props for your stage theatrics. Coincidentally, an attitude indistinguishable from that of a 6-year old child. And equally as wise and realistic.
I'd really like to apologize for the actions of the presidential administration that put you in this predicament. If Polk had been a little more serious about "54'40 or fight" then ...
Then probably the White House would have burned down, again. Such is the nature of wars of conquest. They tend to turn on you. For more information see: Vietnam or Iraq.
you might not be stuck in a country where you spend 6 months of the year working to support the government and all its wonderful social programs
I am very happy here, but thank you for your deep concern for my money. That is so unbelievably kind of "conservatives" or "libertarians" to be always so graciously concerned about other people's, and in particular my, money. Such an altruistic, selfless attitude brings a tear to my eye.
Also, for your information, the taxation burden in Canada is below the average of all of the industrialised world, all of which, naturally, being not American, does not measure up to your standard of perfection: that of your own rear end. More curiously, the US, which you seem to imply being far superior in this regard for an average individual, is nearly indistinguishable from Canada. Funny things happen when you do not include billionaires and corporations in your statistics, don't they?
Add to this the fact that such a worker receives but a fraction of the services the Canadian government provides. But boy, has he got a shiny, gizmo-laden, whiz-bang army for his buck! Too bad that some bearded goofuses in towels with AK-47s and Victorian-era rifles have got it all bogged down in some place far away. It would seem that infinite, self-righteous, sanctimonious hubris has its downsides.
where the per capita GDP is only 3/4th that of your neighbor to the south
And curiously, Sweden, Norway, Luxembourg, Denmark and Iceland, all dens of socialist ways of thinking beat USA in this department handsomely. Perhaps our problem is that we are too much like the USA and not enough like Sweden or Iceland in our social and economic policies.
with a corresponding standard of living
Err...
and where you have to put up with snooty people who think they're still in France.
As opposed to snooty Americans in Alberta who think they're still in Texas?
Well...Polk might not have been able to do much about the quebecois,
That's quite unsurprising as he was not able to do much other then talk big. Which is quite typical of all those big-mouthed chickenhawks who you are so fond of over there.
but I'm reasonably sure that you'd be spared the embarrassment of calling your currency a "Loony."
That's a "loonie" as in "loon".
But don't f
I don't. Or more precisely, I do understand the intention, but it is plain to see that while it might have been semi-workable in the 19th century, the idea is fundamentally flawed.
It is entirely reasonable to protect an idea long enough for a company to produce a product and start making money.
Not so. The claim is being made that patents "promote innovation". That is not true. Desire to learn in some areas and greed and competition in others "promote innovation". The concept of a patent, as an artificial stimuli for development has looong since outlived even the pretenses of its usefullness. The usual excuse, that of protecting "small time" inventor from predation by "large corporation", is also plainly false. Vast majority of patents are filed and held by various corporations, and the ones held by individuals are usualy crackpot.
Another argument for patents claims that they protect the company who invests into reasearch from "freeloading" by copy-cats. I say that such "copy cats" are precisely the engine of competition and the time lead afforded by the new design or discovery is reward enough in itself. It is even self-balancing: more complex the design, longer it will take the competition to copy it properly. Thus longer the exclusivity window. And only continuous research and development guarantees that lead over competitors to be permanent. As it should be. There is no need for an artificial bureaucratic nonsense to "protect", poor, downtrotten multi-billion corporations from each other.
No, folks, this is not an abberrant perversion of law or politics. This is the true purpose, as intended, of IP. Utter and total control of information, including thoughts, basic arithmetics, integer numbers and lanugage constructs. Because, as I kept explaining over and over, all of these are mere forms and facets of the same thing: information. And once you allow "ownership", however illogical that idea is, of information, the rest simply follows from there.
To its inevietable consequences.
Cause and effect. It is as simple as that.
That is because the actual drivers for the individual channels are much smaller as otherwise they would not fit in the cups. So in order to achieve a good bass response, a sub-woofer was needed, very much on the same principle as the "satelite" speaker systems.
But, of course someone will buy the things because they say "subwoofer" and "5.1" on them, even though the subwoofer isn't needed and most people have 2 ears rather than 5.1 of the
Apparently the effect is very pronounced, particularly in FPS games where things sneak behind you. In a regular 2D audio headset there is no distinction between front and back. Also, even though we have only 2 ears, apparently our brains are capable of quite sophisitcated DSP-like function and are able to tell the direction not only based on relative delay between ears but also on the changes of the sound characteristics as it is being reflected by the flesh of our ears, even though we are deprived of head-movement based analysis while wearing headsets.
Or you can try to go real fancy and get Turtle Beach HPA 5.1 channel gaming headset complete with actual miniature subwoofers in each cup + front/back and center channel speakers. Not to mention a removable boom mike and much better overall construction.
I would only wish so. I was rushed and therefore that is but a pale shadow of what my Opus Magnum could have been on this subject. Let's put it this way, it had singing pigs in it. You don't know what you missed!
Not in the scenario as I wrote it, although yes it was weak as I was rushed having to do some work and I had no time for elaborate analogies on Slashdot.
1. (good) The "dude" to say LET'S GET THE PIG OUT OF THE HOUSE -- which your dude never does.
Again, he was not the one who put the pig there and the access to the house is controlled by Martin. The onus is primarily on him.
2. (better)You grab one end, and I'll grab the other.
Again, since Martin refuses to even acknowledge the problem, any prescriptions for its cure are moot.
Saying you hate Bush is easy, but that will not win an election. (Actually, given Bush's missteps, it finally might in this case, but typically it does not.) Democrats refuse to accept this; most keep talking as if hating Bush will be enough to get them into office.
I did not intend to defend the Democrats, I merely objected to Martin's way of putting things. In order to have positive solutions, one has to first admit that a problem exists.
These numbers are extreme to demonstrate the point, but that is why Bush can be so vilified and yet win. Even if *every* undecided votes for (insert Democrat here), Bush can still win if he can just get 70% of his backers to show up at the polls. This the Republicans do, not to this degree, but just enough. The result is that you can have a President *hated* by a large portion of the population and still get comfortably re-elected.
You are correct that voter apathy is one of the devastating diseases destroying the democratic process. But again, I merely objected to Martin's funky ways, and not this, and many other possible angles of analysis.
The lesson for your "dude" is that as long as we have such high voter apathy, we are going to get exactly what we deserve -- polarizing Presidents who are loved by their base and hated most everywhere else. 60% of the population may see a pig in the White House, but they do not care enough to get him out.
Well, we don't know what they see, but the step #1 will be always to make them aware of the porky trepidation, as one cannot fix problems without first acknowledging them first.
Maybe you prefer standing on the sidelines feeling superior to the woo-woos, but a rational "dude" who actually wants to change things might think it time to try something different.
I am a Canadian and my options in this regard are limited to dispatching witty repartes on Slashdot.
The GP post was trying to tell you what could work to get *him* to vote. Feel free to disregard his advice. In fact, feel free to keep doing the same thing, and keep on losing. It's (y)our choice.
I am afraid that is not so. The GP was merely going through his List A of excuses. Should the Democrats match those, he would have proceeded onto the List B. I can tell so with certainty because the GP refused to even acknowledge that the problem exist and yet he demanded that the other side produces positive proposals. A dead giveway.
A dude: Hey, Martin, there is a pig in your living room. It escaped from the pig farm and somehow got into your house.
Martin Blank: So what? I am not willing to listen to "Its a pig!". You need to come up with what is specifically wrong and make a viable plan!
A dude: Err, you are not listening, there is a PIG in your living room, it tracked mud and feces in and is now urinating on your carpet!
Martin Blank: That is merely a statement of hatred for pigs. That is not a platform.
A dude: Man, what is wrong with you? Don't you care for your home? Look, the pig just smashed your TV and is now chewing on your drapes.
Martin Blank: You are not addressing the issues that need to be addressed.
A dude: There goes your sofa!
Martin Blank: You are just attempting to sway me by your "I am not a pig" stance. It wont work.
A dude: I am talking to a woo-woo. I am outa here.
Martin Blank: And that is a prime example of partisan bickering. We might not all agre on ...
*trailes off in the distance, interrupted only by loud noises of things breaking and smashing in a house he is standing next to *
The distinction is that when you are driving to work in your private car, you are not doing so in your official capacity as an employee (until you arrive there or if you are driving a company vehicle). If you are driving a company vehicle, during work hour, as part of your job, it is in fact quite likely that the company might be fined and its insurance rates go up. For this reason, many vehicle insurance plans have provisions for "business" use of employee's passenger vehicles, to allow for such extra fines.
That is why ISPs, and in fact no other companies at all, can be held accountable for absolutely anything, because the genius nwbvt has decided that only "people" perform actionable activities, such as writing hate articles, and there is no such thing as "shared responsibility" in nwbts' world of wonderful and wacky "logic". And, according to him, since every company under the sun is composed of people, there is no way for the company itself to be seen as doing anything, ever. So if, for example, an owner and a CEO of a company, during his official duties, fleeces the public out of millions, placing them in the company's account (very much as a white supremacist would use an "ISP" he controls to try to shield himself from responsibility for his screeds), the prosecutors can only go after his personal account, since, according to the master logician nwbt, the company itself is a sacred cow and not responsible for such activities, under any conceivable circumstances (or perhaps only when nwbt farts in an appropriate direction, on his personal and arbitrary discretion - after all, he is setting the rules of "logic" here, doesn't he?). Surely, it is only people who do things, not companies, and besides, nwbt was planning to use his own company to stash his loot away and so he would be very crossed at the thought of his grand scheme being somehow imperfect.
As I said, go bother someone else with your "logic".
Why stick with software only? Try "Xerox", "Blackberry", "Walkman", "iPod" or even the old-fashioned "Mercedes" or "BMW". None of these convey anything about the respective products, yet are widely recognised and immediately associated with consumer items names.
You are not "defending" yourself against anything. You are persistently on the attack here, trying to drive home your pet peeve, which is the very thing I was attempting to ward against with my remark. I guess I should have spelled it explictely in large bold letters for those slow in comprehension but fast with delusional axes to grind.
Ok, you simply do not know enough knowledge of the IT industry to know what an ISP does.
Ok, I get it. You are a dishonest prick with a chip on his shoulder. I am quite familiar with what normal, sane ISP's do, and the one thing they do not do is write articles for white supremacist sites. Go bother someone else. Goodbye.
I mentioned Canadian law specifically to pre-empt a long winded and completely irrelevant, but predictable, discussion on merits of the law itself in the light of the US constitution, human rights, George Bush and what not by the usual crew of freaked-out Americans. And while it worked with most, one can always expect to find someone who will insist on ignoring this, and many other repeated attempts to stop him from derailing the discussion onto his pet peeves, following which he will accuse me of going off topic.
Yes, thats what scares people. Instead of just fining him for posting that content in the context of a site owner, they also fined his company (which in the eyes of the law is distinct from the flesh and blood people who own it).
I see now that you are simply being dishonest in your insistance on pretending that you do not understand the issue. The company was fined for creating and operating the site, just like a person would. In the eyes of the law, a corporation is a person, who can be charged for the same activities a blood and flesh individual would, as a co-conspirator or a partner in crime. In this case for being a supremacist hate-monger. So unless you are an owner of an ISP who during his official duties creates and operates supremacist sites for his own amusement and who uses his official position to hide behind the company name, the ISP is in no danger. Which, judging from your continued attempts at distorting this situation into an industrty-wide scare, is propably too uncomfortably similiar to something you do. Otherwise you would not be so panicked and deseprate.
Again, the "validity" of the law itself has no bearing on the relationship of the white supremacist and the ISP in question, and the subsequent fines for both.
Are you sure about that? Does the law state that ISPs can only be fined if the owner of the site has also committed some other crimes? Or is the law being selectively applied based on other actions performed by the ISP's owner. I really don't care, my statements apply to either case.
My understanding is that the ISP in question got charged because it was the owner and operator of the site, as one of its officers, in his official capacity, created and operated the site and subsequently, in his official capacity, sought to conceal that fact during communication with the complaint lodger. In other words, there is no distinction in this case between the ISP and the white supremacist when it comes to operation of the site. They are equally culpable. But the company being legaly a "separate" entitiy got fined separately, even though in real life the company and its owner-operator were one and the same.
So do I. And which is totally irrelevant to the post I made, which dealt with the accuracy of the slashdot summary.
Yes, I know their lack of action when they were asked to remove the content was the basis for the fine. Thats what has everyone pissed off, requiring ISPs to remove content is censorship.
No, he was fined for being intricately involved in operation of the site and his handling of the complaint in that capacity while trying to use the ISP as a shield.
Are you now trying to imply he disagreed with the content?
Are you now trying to be obtuse? Or just incapable of grasping the difference between merely hosting and that of actually creating and operating the site in question?
Seperate fines were given for the actual posting of the material. He is recieving an additional fine as the owner of the ISP.
For his actions as an owner of that ISP. No other ISP has been so charged (and there were many such cases involving hate web sites already) and none will, unless, like in this case, they also happened to be deeply involved in the affair.
Please RTFA. While the other fines were censorship as well, this is the one that is really pissing everyone off.
No, everyone is pissed off because some Slashdotters love to fly off their handles at the slightest provocation. Nowhere in the story is the actual legal analysis of the decision in question, only the boasting and fist shaking of the not-so-neutral anti-hate-website crusaders who "warn" everybody and everyone about the coming pogroms they are about to conduct against "servers". Get a grip.
It does so. From the perspective of fear of random bystander ISPs being targetted to that of a specific site opertor being targetted, under existing Canadian law.
This particular fine was not for expressing a particularly vile political position, it was for owning an ISP that hosted a website that expressed a particularly vile political position.
Not so. The boastful comments of the self-interested winning party claiming so aside, the judge was certain to take into the consideration both the ownership chain as well as the responses of the "ISP" in question to the complaints.
Knowledge that he shared the website's positions should do nothing to change any perspective.
He actually operated the website, which is a far cry from "sharing the opinion" of it.
Even if you agree that people who post this crap should be fined, his fine should have been limited to covering only what he said.
Which is precisely the case. He (while pretending to be the ISP) had rejected the complaints and pretended not to be affiliated with the site. He (is his capacity as the ISP) was fined for that activity.
No, what I am saying is that the Slashdot summary is misleading.
And that is supposed to make us think better of this ruling?
Yes. If the ruling matched the summary, its impact would have been much worse.
Yes, white supremists are assholes, and in a purely just world they would be hung from their balls and set on fire. But that doesn't mean we should throw out the free marketplace of ideas and use the government's force to shut up anyone we disagree with.
Again, this has nothing to do with my post. In fact I do not agree with the supposed wisdom of the present Canadian law in this regard. But that is irrelevant to the post you replied to.