Somewhere in the process for a secret or above security clearance you automatically get fingerprinted (or it worked that way back when I first got one). I needed cleared pronto, before I even reported to unspecified location. I remember getting it done at a local police department, who transmitted the results to the DOD. There was a small boy there, with his mother. He was very curious to see what the policeman was doing with my digits, until his mom said "Get away from there Jimmy, that's a BAD man!". The cop was nice enough to set her straight as soon as we both stopped laughing, but my prints are filed, not just with DOD, but a copy is doubtless retained by unspecified local PD. Knowing both some competent police and some real Barney Fifes, I routinely expect to to be at a traffic stop someday and have some deputy who doesn't understand didley over-react and throw down on me just upon learning my prints are on permanent file. What's funny when a civilian does it can be downright tragic when an armed law enforcement officer makes the same assumption.
The Gestapo started assembling records on potential subversives and criminals and even running small pilot programs where they incarcerated people as early as 1931. At first the records were focused on people many considered undesirables, and the small scale incarceration programs were often technically exceeding the boundaries German law still had at the time. Organized camps were seen by 1933. At that point, most of the people in the gestapo's record's programs and in these camps fell into one of five groups. Conventional criminals (particularly allegedly mentally deficient criminals), Communists/Trade Unionists/Social Democrats, Jehovah's Witnesses and other religious groups that refused to swear oaths of allegence, Gypsies, and homosexuals. It was about August of 1937 when these groups began to be eclipsed by growing numbers of Jews as the 'final solution' was implemented.
Massive records gathering helped greatly to implement this program without public outcry. Whenever possible, political or religious opponents were actually arrested first for some crime, even if it was often very minor, and the public records showed them as serving time for other criminal acts rather than politically related acts. While court records may show that the person was primarily given a 10 year sentence for having publically spoken against Hitler, for example, they were whenever possible given additional charges, such as illegal weapons posession, hoarding of contraband, or other dangerous sounding or disreputable charges, even if these were mere three month midemeanors under German law. The press generally reported the sentences as being for one or two of the non-political crimes, and miscellanious other unspecified offenses.
When and where basically are called 'spaceshiftng' and 'timeshifting' in quasi-legal-speak. Personally I support fair use being legally defined to include formal, broad criteria for 'when' and 'where', and at least a limited 'Who' - immediate family for sure, and normal definitions of 'friends' as well. So far as I know, the RIAA doesn't want to list any formal criteria for fair use whatsoever.
For the case that is the core of this article, will it be possible to ask the RIAA for some examples of fair use allowed as it specifically applies to this defendant? I'm imagining asking the experts some questions such as "You claim that the defendant did steps W, X, Y, and Z. If the defendant had only done X, wouldn't that still fall under fair use? Would you prosecute for step Y alone? Is step W by itself illegal?". Presumably the plaintiff's lawyer will focus only on the steps that support their case, so you are looking for two things. Either lots of other actions that are part of the process but are also legal in themselves, or claims that apparently innocuous actions are part of the definition of infringement the plaintiff is offering. Unless the RIAA's experts have moderated the official position of the association, their definition of the limits of fair use will probably be so draconian as to polarize a typical jury. With any luck, you can get the expert to claim that there is no actual right to create a shared documents folder, regardless of contents, or no actual right to use a PC instead of a dedicated player for listening to a CD, or something like that. For one example, if you can get the expert to agree that it's copying, not simple use that violates copyright, ask about the copying involved in a typical PC play cycle, that is copying the music from CD to RAM or Swap file or dedicated buffer chip on the soundcard before playback. Even if he is technically accurate, his position may well seem so unfair to a jury they will start looking for any flaws in the plaintiff's case.
Obviously it's a dumb idea to post information you don't want published in public.
I tend to agree overall, and certainly a lot of the cases we see with photos of drunken partying by underage beauty pagent contestants and such bears this out.
But (you knew that was coming didn't you?) there's a very inobvious side to it. Society's standards for what's deplorable, offensive or un-cool change, especially over decades. What if, 20 years from now, anti-smoking movements have made tobacco actually illegal, and a photo of a person with a cigarette has the impact on hiring and such that a photo with a joint can now? What if, 10 years from now, a backlash against non-green practices makes that picture of you with your new SUV as unpopular as a picture of you in KKK robes would be right now?
Personally, I'll admit to owning a polyester leisure suit in the Disco era (just one), and if that makes me a figure of fun, I'm glad somebody's day was brightened. But back when I bought it, no one was laughing yet, and it wasn't yet 'obvious' they someday would be.
Before we even consider someone analyzing a poster's whole history, remember some of the people doing the analysis will be the sort who become one issue voters. What happens when an employer has access to a script that will take a list of job applicants and see which of them have ever posted anything relating to abortion, or the war in Iraq, or any political hot topic of the month? Then there are specific topics an employer is not supposed to broach with a prospective employee - how long before a script based exactly on that list is available to effectively bypass the law?
I'm sure a lot of people on Slashdot don't agree with that law, but there's still a big difference between the general act of writing a script to look for certain connection between data points, and deliberately taloring that script to do an end run around the courts. Ultimately, this technology will lead to someone creating some more software with no purpose except to circumvent the law. If the government's response is the same as we have seen for file sharing, it won't surprise me, but if the government doesn't respond the same way that will gravely concern me.
Worse, it's easier for the lazy minded to just sort the list for people who have made no comments on controversial subjects than to read enough comments to see if the person agrees with you. It becomes a great tool for getting more bland, 'I don't have any opinions unless you tell me to' people into higher positions.
There's people pushing it hard here, but they don't have any actual leverage to compel you to use it. Even the worst Slashdot Linux fanatics are like three year old muggers threatening you with a sound whiffle batting if you don't do as they say. What kind of threat is "stay away from Windows or I won't tell you how to use Linux"? Now switch to Debian or I shall taunt you a second time!
I don't know if the bullet points as you've stated them are a completly accurate condensation of the administration's position (I'm sure they used more words, they're politicians after all), but I think it's worth showing what's wrong with them as presented.
# There is a scientifically measured indication of global warming.
This could probably stand as written. It would be more accurate to add that there is also scientifically measured indications of associated phenomina involving climate change in various directions (i.e. warmer here, dryer there, stormier or wetter a third place) as well, but that word associated is evidently one of the sticking points.
# There is scientific evidence of an increase in Carbon Dioxide content in the air.
This can stand as written.
# Is is presumed that the higher Carbon Dioxide is entirely the result of human industry.
This doesn't have to be assumed for the rest of the arguement. Some CO2 could be the result of natural processes, some from human industry,and the results would still follow. Splitting hairs over whether all, or most, or only a significant part of the CO2 comes from industry is just that, splitting hairs, unless the human industrial fraction is tremendously low.
# It is a hypothesis that the industrial contribution of Carbon Dioxide has a direct and positive correlation to the measured global temperatures.
A hypothesis is not yet supported. When enough evidence is gathered and the hypothesis gains predictive power, it becomes a theory. Some theories are more well tested than others, and we could debate over just how well supported this one is, but it is definitely more developed than a hypothesis. Some theories have competing theories, but there is no such thing as scientific competition between a theory and an alternative hypothesis, and any arguement against the "Industrial CO2 contributes to global temperature rises" theory also needs to be developed into a theory, or it's worthless to consider.
# It is unknown if the current global warming trend is one that is an entirely natural cycle of the planet irregardless of human industrial contributions, a trend that is entirely the direct and full result of human industry, or some mixture between the two (human industry augmeting an already natural phenomenon)
I'd argue that we know it's likely to be the third category, by analogy with most other processes - very few complex things have only a single influencing factor. Again, it's splitting hairs unless the industrial portion of the causes is trivial compared to natural sources.
# There is no direct evidence or proof to indicate that a change in human industrial behaviour will have any effect on Carbon Dioxide emissions. (This is largely bullshit but you can't provide physical evidence until you do it and he doesn't want to).
This is technically true, but only in the same sense as "There is no direct evidence or proof that shooting Bob in the head will kill him". Even highly reliable causes cannot be assumed to always produce their typical effects, 100& of the time, and regardless of other as yet unspecified changes happening in the future.
# There is no evidence that a change in human industrial behaviour will have any impact on global warming, especially if it's an entirely natural phenomenon. (This is also largely bullshit because you can't test it. It also flies against basic logic that less human contribution will at the very least, not make the problem worse).
The "especially if" clause is all that makes the rest sound superficially plausible. Try even the weak counter-version "There is no evidence that a change in human industrial behavior will have any impact on global warming, even if it's a partly natural, partly industrial related phenomenon", to see how absurd it sounds. You have to assume in a dependant clause that it is impossible for a connection to exist first, before you can claim no evidence exists in the normally independant main portion of the sentence. That's not just bad science, it's bad grammer. If anyone in the Bush administration actually said this this way, the English teachers of the USA need to be up in arms faster than the scientists.
Read my question again. Do you know of a case where a single person has been convicted of conspiracy to commit X, where there are allegedly no other people involved to make it a conspiracy? FYI, an unindicted co-conspirator is invariably a witness for the prosecution, not a nonentity whose name and circumstances of involvement will be witheld from a jury in open court. There may be reasons why an "UCC" won't be prosecuted, but those same reasons are not simultaniously reasons why they can't be prosecuted, and lumping the two together as you did is disingenious. You still can't prosecute any members of a 'ring' as you put it, without showing that a ring existed. You can't tie people to a conspiracy without showing that at least two people communicated.
One of the taxes I'm referring to was added to everyone's phone bill. There are plenty of poor people who have a phone. I guess the poor's job is to pay for the rich's services and not recive any themselves. Frankly, I didn't play the rich vrs. poor card, you did, and considering where you played it you're making a great argument for classic Marxism. You just actually, really, and most sincerely said the equivalent of "let them eat cake!".
Another source of funding has been easments on broadcast bandwidth. The FCC has let phone and cable companies have lots of bandwidth cheap or rebated, based on build out promises. (And yes, the phone companies use lots of broadcast links). Those airwaves could have been sold for much more, easing the tax burden for everyone, rich or poor.
Both those are federally controlled rebates and taxes. Then there's the state situation. Both phone and cable co's have sponsored legislation or filed court petitions that prevent local governments from choosing to enter contracts in this field, bumping that up to the whole-state or regional level. So, in the name of capitalist freedom, they are advocating taking power away from local governments to give it to bigger governments. Then there's the cases where state tax rebates and land easments were contingent on a specific promise, such as wireing all the secondary schools in the area by 1997, oops 2001, oops 2004, oops...
The reason you don't see my point is you believe a whole lot about the classes that just plain isn't true. You've fallen for a corporate line of bull that says this is a class struggle, and the liberals are trying to buy votes with the productive class's money, and all that. It's not - it's about good old fashioned keeping one's promises.
(IANAL) Car metaphors are almost never cogent, but I see a bit of a point in that one. If you loan out something to a friend, and he fails to take good care with that something and it is stolen, you can sue either the friend or the thief, or both. It doesn't matter at all that in the example, the thief is also committing another crime (bank robbery).
Let me repeat, the robbery is totally irrelevant. The car thief could have taken a car from in front of a cleaners after lawfully picking up his laundry, and the civil issues don't change. The only crime the something's owner is concerned about in civil court is grand theft auto, and even that only matters if it lets the owner file for something such as triple punitive damages.
A person can certainly sue someone for taking something in a way that isn't criminal. (A and be are friends. A owns item X. B borrows X, with intent to return it. (B even leaves a note saying "A, I borrowed your X - I'll bring it back next Tuesday.). A can still sue B for damages, such as problems caused by A's not having X at a time when A needed it.)
As a matter of practicality, if a crime is also involved it's often better to wait until the criminal case is decided and all that evidence becomes a matter of record, already gathered at taxpayer expense and available for a civil suit, but it's not required (at least in most jurisdictions) either to wait out criminal courts or even for appropriate charges to be filed at all, before a person can file a suit.
What also may matter is what you may have already recovered from sueing one party. If your friend pays up for the car, costs of getting around until the car is replaced, and so on, then you are compensated. You can't get compensated again for the same damages by the crook, and if you did somehow get the court to award you damages a second time, you would normally have to give them back to your friend. Most times in such cases, the smart thing to do is to get the court to decide who has standing to file, and standing to recover from the crook, before going to civil court again.
I'm not sure what the original poster was getting at, but it kind of looks like 'he' is arguing that an RIAA suit isn't fitting that model in some way or other. I'd be interested, if that is what he means, to see if there's a real arguement for that position.
The Inalienable rights here are to have people treat with you honestly, and to own what you have paid for. The cable and phone companies got paid already by subsidies and special granted legal status to build in equal access. They got susidies to provide services. They got awards of bandwidth, easments on land, and taxes paid by customers and rebated to them - all this was justified by the corporate promises to put those funds into use increasing access. The companies promised things not just publicly, but in many cases under oath (while testifying before congress, for example). Now they are avoiding doing what they promised. If you offer to sell me a car for 5,000$, and you take the money and then refuse to hand over the car, that's fraud and theft. Fraud and theft is what taking the subsidies without doing what was promised amounts to, and yes, you have an inalienable right to resist being treated that way. I'm sorry you are giving your rights away, but please stop trying to give mine away too.
IANAL, but something about this tells me that a decent lawyer could find something to get this evidence dismissed against both parties due to improper police handling of evidence.
IANALE (either), but it's called 'fruit of the poisonous tree'. Once evidence is obtained or handled unlawfuly, it stays unlawful.
For the case above, how can the grand jury charge two people with conspiracy to commit if one of them can't be charged at all? It takes at least two to make a conspiracy, which would be the crime the police think has in fact happened. The police can't lawfully describe what they think happened without naming the friend can they? So, they have to charge you with a crime other than the one they think happened.
They can't show that the evidence they have was always lawfully in their possesion and couldn't have been tampered with, because it was initially unlawfully obtained. if they leave your friend out, they have to purjure themselves on the stand. "Yes ladies and gentlemen, the defendant held a ladder for himself as he climbed into the second story window. Then he lowered the TV set to himself, whereupon he caught it. Then he stored it on his property, whee we found it.". They can't even legally call your friend a person or persons unknown, because a. they do know, and b. you know, and as defendant have wide leeway in introducing the claim that it was in fact the person they can't charge even if they don't want to bring that up.
What happens if you call your friend as a witness to say you were somewhere else when the crime happened? Do the cops prove he's lieing by evidence they are not allowed to use?
4. Nothing to hide -- if you're not expecially interesting to the government...
This is the one you CANT pick as an option. People have ended up on government watchlists for incredibly dumb reasons, such as having the same last name as another person, or being photographed in the background at a public event. Unless you know of a way to change your name to one that no one else will ever commit a crime under, or how to never be near where anything of government interest will happen, there is no guarenteed way to do option 4. Since either of those examples would take being able to predict the future, being 100% successful at it would be required - the government would be very interested indeed in a 90% successful psychic if they could catch one.
Recent studies on riots have shown that probably as many as 3 out of 4 people involved are just trying to slip away from the crowd, but want to do it gradually and casually because they fear pushing and shoving against the flow will draw the mob's attention to themselves. That fact alone means that there are lots of people currently on government watchlists who were effectively innocent of any intent. Even if we assume the police tend to concentrate on the more active leaders in a mob scenario, they are not going to be nearly 100% successful at singleing them out (if they were, they would have understood how many people just get tangled up in a riot many years ago, and we wouldn't have needed the studies).
One thing to remember here is that the standard conservative position is that it's desireable for the Supreme Court judges to read letters such as the one you reference to help determine the framer's original intent. It's the standard liberal position that the constitution is a living document - for text book liberals, that doesn't mean the court shouldn't refer to intent, but that intent doesn't always govern.
There are some very ignorant (or possibly just plain malicious) people who have started attacking the liberal viewpoint over the living document position - I say ignorant not because the 'original intent' position is necessarily wrong, but because they have opposed it by making original intent something the court should guess at in a near vacuum. Only certain other documents are supposed to be relevant to helping determine intent, and often judges who refer to other documents, such as the letter you mention, are falsely characterized as liberal activist judges who are not sticking with original intent at all.
So you've given a very good arguement for the user's right to copy being a natural right, and creator copyright for a limited term being a gift of social law. It's actually an old style conservative arguement. At this point, it's not conservative enough for the 'right wing', and half the Fox comentators would call you a liberal. Now for the 64 dollar question. How do we fix the copyright system, if we let someone re-define the centrist position so that it's to the right of practically every poster to this thread.
I'd be interested in knowing a few things about this article: What type of disease were they postulating? Bacterium? Virus? Does long ago mean 5,000 years, as in Egypt or Babylon, 50,000, as in Neandertal interaction period, or 500,000, as in pre Homo-Sapiens?
Then there was Thalidomide. It cause no increase in birth defect rates in any of the typical animal test species, such as mice, rabbits or pigs, which is why it was approved for human use. It wasn't until after the first human casualties were already being reported in Europe that a U.S. researcher got evidence of animal birth defects, and that took testing on exotics such as horses. The FDA employee who blocked sale in the US could only justify it as 'playing a hunch' and was almost fired before it turned out her hunch was right. How many animal test programs normally use expensive and slow reproducing creatures such as horses?
Plus there are plenty of confirmed cases where the person checking ID's doesn't know even the basics needed to judge - i.e. there really are some cops in the 48 contiguous U.S. states that think an Alaskan driver's liscence is from some other country, and not valid for driving in "America". There have been several cases recently of customs officers that refused to let people cross back from Mexico when they said they were Hawaiian, and the number of reported cases where someone in authority assumes that being from the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands or the Marshall Islands makes some person not a U.S. citizen grows literally daily.
Yes, some, maybe many, of these cases involve just plain dumbness, but some of them are the result of inevitably inadiquate training - for example, there are by my count at least 78 possible 2 letter postal codes for state abbreviations, all of which have appeared in just that form on some kinds of ID, and all of which, at times have been unaccompanied by the full name of the region to explain them. Does anyone want to guess what the 28 that aren't for US states are? What's PW? AE? MB? SK? CZ?
Try this one - Why should a U.S. cop stop and hold for investigation a driver showing a liscence with the code CZ as part of the address? Why shouldn't that same cop hold up one showing MB? (Here's a hint (that should make it even worse) - CZ is created by the US, and MB is of forign origin). No fair googling.
How much of a training program would it take to clarify this particular bit of esoterica to the people who all theoretically need to know it? How many other areas of expertese do our law enforcement agents need to know to this level, but don't? How many of those other areas are more likely to be immediate life or death issues for LE personnel? How on earth would we afford it all?
Like you, I don't support a unified ID, even though at first glance, it looks like it might make things easier. I don't, because in part, it won't really simplify complexities of law like these, but it will soak up a lot of money that could be spent training law enforcement to cope with them. Those complexities aren't going to go away because of a unified ID. They are still built into our legal system, and some of them are built into the world at large.
Small mammals tend to be pretty hardy and numerous, but so do small birds. Catastrophism is still valid theoretically, and you're certainly allowed to suggest a disaster affected things without it being unscientific speculation (witness the current dinosaur extinction theories). But, birds gradually winning out over mammals locally is not really far fetched either. If you start with something like mice and sparrows, and the sparrow's descendants fill the predator and large grazer niches just a little faster than the mice's do, it could end up all birds. In other places, birds get some of the niches, mammals others, and so in North America, there is no bat trying to fill the eagle or owl niche, and no flightless grazing bird even approaching the mass of a buffalo. As Gould kept insisting, contingency plays a big part.
The average lifespan for a big cat species is only about 4 million years. For other large predators about 7 to 8 million, and for large grazing herbivores of various sorts, around 12 to 20 million (medium sized antelope-likes tend to last longer than cape buffalo-likes, as species go.). Small mammals, such as rodents and ungulates, do tend to last relatively unchanged, and 16 million years is actually pretty reasonable for a mouse-like species, with even 20 to 24 million being possible. I'm using species here in a pretty rigorous way, meaning full interbreeding would be commonly possible between generations separated by those millions of years. (If they just built a mouse sized time machine that is). You can stretch those numbers some, if you mean the new generation is descended from the first one and still looks pretty much like them, but scientists aren't sure about breeding ability, for one reason or another.
4 to 4.5 million years ago, our Human ancestors were probably still Chimpanzee ancestors as well. You could probably justify calling the family tree great apes at least as far back as 10 million years, but 16 million years ago, we may be talking about something that was lesser ape or even average monkey sized. It's even possible that we're talking about a creature weighing 20 Kg. or less as a typical adult. Yes that's still a "very much lot" larger than a mouse, but claiming "great ape" instead of "moderately bulky lemur" may be pushing it.
Scientists tend to reject remote chances near automatically when it comes to fossils. Since only about 1 creature in 100 million or so ever gets found in fossil form (addmitedly a rough average), the odds of that also being a 1 in 100 million exception for other reasons become very much astronomical (or even just a one in a million chance does). If we have only 6 Foobarasaurus Smex fossils that are close enough to full skeletons to judge size well, and there were probably 600 million of them during the whole time the species was around, what are the odds that one of those six is the biggest single specimen that ever lived? In the same way, what are the odds that one of those six died from being struck by lightning?
When I heard the horrible screams from what those puns were doing to your parents, I had to stuff my fingers in my ears just to sleep. Now I can't hear anything, so I say making puns ought to be a deaf penalty offense.
Now your computer can act like you first thing in the morning. HAL, here we come!
You mean, If HAL had just stopped for a cup of coffee, both astronauts would have ended up drifting into space? Then HAL could have finished the mission alone, and the last report would have been "My Chandra, it's full of binary stars!".
Except 'our' side doesn say the right should be "taken from this person" after a time, at all. We (most of us) do support a limited right being given for a time, and then reverting to the public. If that's "taking", then so is you repossessing rental property after the rental period. It's not theft to recover your own property (the natural right to copy being the property we are talking about), after the period you granted that right to another expires.
"Whahhh!" says the citizen - "He said I could walk across his land this one time, and after I did, he won't let me do it again. He's "taken" my 'accessright'". "Boo-hoo-hoo" says the state, "I incarcerated him for the time the court allowed, and now he wants out just because his 28 year sentence is over. He's "taken" my 'Incarcerationright'".
Rights are controlled, transferred or restricted only for limited times all the time in law. If something had to be "taken" to support reversion to the previous right holder, then every limited time right entailed a theft somewhere. Congratulations, you've just proved that property is theft, so please rename yourself P. J. Proudhon, or turn yourself in for having violated his copyright.
It's less than nothing - the unions have an existing contract with the automakers. The artists have a unilateral extension granted by congress, revising the earlier (social) contract in favor of just one party. With the last cycle of extensions, congress took away, (on average) your right to copy, plus your kid's rights unless and until they live past age 60, your grand-kids rights until they are about 40, and your great-grand-kid's rights until they are about 20. That's what the term 'life+70' years really amounts to. That's what the parent poster was talking about, and what you are ignoring.
Slashdot Mirror
Somewhere in the process for a secret or above security clearance you automatically get fingerprinted (or it worked that way back when I first got one). I needed cleared pronto, before I even reported to unspecified location. I remember getting it done at a local police department, who transmitted the results to the DOD. There was a small boy there, with his mother. He was very curious to see what the policeman was doing with my digits, until his mom said "Get away from there Jimmy, that's a BAD man!". The cop was nice enough to set her straight as soon as we both stopped laughing, but my prints are filed, not just with DOD, but a copy is doubtless retained by unspecified local PD. Knowing both some competent police and some real Barney Fifes, I routinely expect to to be at a traffic stop someday and have some deputy who doesn't understand didley over-react and throw down on me just upon learning my prints are on permanent file. What's funny when a civilian does it can be downright tragic when an armed law enforcement officer makes the same assumption.
The Gestapo started assembling records on potential subversives and criminals and even running small pilot programs where they incarcerated people as early as 1931. At first the records were focused on people many considered undesirables, and the small scale incarceration programs were often technically exceeding the boundaries German law still had at the time. Organized camps were seen by 1933. At that point, most of the people in the gestapo's record's programs and in these camps fell into one of five groups. Conventional criminals (particularly allegedly mentally deficient criminals), Communists/Trade Unionists/Social Democrats, Jehovah's Witnesses and other religious groups that refused to swear oaths of allegence, Gypsies, and homosexuals. It was about August of 1937 when these groups began to be eclipsed by growing numbers of Jews as the 'final solution' was implemented.
Massive records gathering helped greatly to implement this program without public outcry. Whenever possible, political or religious opponents were actually arrested first for some crime, even if it was often very minor, and the public records showed them as serving time for other criminal acts rather than politically related acts. While court records may show that the person was primarily given a 10 year sentence for having publically spoken against Hitler, for example, they were whenever possible given additional charges, such as illegal weapons posession, hoarding of contraband, or other dangerous sounding or disreputable charges, even if these were mere three month midemeanors under German law. The press generally reported the sentences as being for one or two of the non-political crimes, and miscellanious other unspecified offenses.
When and where basically are called 'spaceshiftng' and 'timeshifting' in quasi-legal-speak. Personally I support fair use being legally defined to include formal, broad criteria for 'when' and 'where', and at least a limited 'Who' - immediate family for sure, and normal definitions of 'friends' as well. So far as I know, the RIAA doesn't want to list any formal criteria for fair use whatsoever.
For the case that is the core of this article, will it be possible to ask the RIAA for some examples of fair use allowed as it specifically applies to this defendant?
I'm imagining asking the experts some questions such as "You claim that the defendant did steps W, X, Y, and Z. If the defendant had only done X, wouldn't that still fall under fair use? Would you prosecute for step Y alone? Is step W by itself illegal?". Presumably the plaintiff's lawyer will focus only on the steps that support their case, so you are looking for two things. Either lots of other actions that are part of the process but are also legal in themselves, or claims that apparently innocuous actions are part of the definition of infringement the plaintiff is offering. Unless the RIAA's experts have moderated the official position of the association, their definition of the limits of fair use will probably be so draconian as to polarize a typical jury. With any luck, you can get the expert to claim that there is no actual right to create a shared documents folder, regardless of contents, or no actual right to use a PC instead of a dedicated player for listening to a CD, or something like that. For one example, if you can get the expert to agree that it's copying, not simple use that violates copyright, ask about the copying involved in a typical PC play cycle, that is copying the music from CD to RAM or Swap file or dedicated buffer chip on the soundcard before playback. Even if he is technically accurate, his position may well seem so unfair to a jury they will start looking for any flaws in the plaintiff's case.
Obviously it's a dumb idea to post information you don't want published in public.
I tend to agree overall, and certainly a lot of the cases we see with photos of drunken partying by underage beauty pagent contestants and such bears this out.
But (you knew that was coming didn't you?) there's a very inobvious side to it. Society's standards for what's deplorable, offensive or un-cool change, especially over decades. What if, 20 years from now, anti-smoking movements have made tobacco actually illegal, and a photo of a person with a cigarette has the impact on hiring and such that a photo with a joint can now? What if, 10 years from now, a backlash against non-green practices makes that picture of you with your new SUV as unpopular as a picture of you in KKK robes would be right now?
Personally, I'll admit to owning a polyester leisure suit in the Disco era (just one), and if that makes me a figure of fun, I'm glad somebody's day was brightened. But back when I bought it, no one was laughing yet, and it wasn't yet 'obvious' they someday would be.
Before we even consider someone analyzing a poster's whole history, remember some of the people doing the analysis will be the sort who become one issue voters. What happens when an employer has access to a script that will take a list of job applicants and see which of them have ever posted anything relating to abortion, or the war in Iraq, or any political hot topic of the month? Then there are specific topics an employer is not supposed to broach with a prospective employee - how long before a script based exactly on that list is available to effectively bypass the law?
I'm sure a lot of people on Slashdot don't agree with that law, but there's still a big difference between the general act of writing a script to look for certain connection between data points, and deliberately taloring that script to do an end run around the courts. Ultimately, this technology will lead to someone creating some more software with no purpose except to circumvent the law. If the government's response is the same as we have seen for file sharing, it won't surprise me, but if the government doesn't respond the same way that will gravely concern me.
Worse, it's easier for the lazy minded to just sort the list for people who have made no comments on controversial subjects than to read enough comments to see if the person agrees with you. It becomes a great tool for getting more bland, 'I don't have any opinions unless you tell me to' people into higher positions.
There's people pushing it hard here, but they don't have any actual leverage to compel you to use it. Even the worst Slashdot Linux fanatics are like three year old muggers threatening you with a sound whiffle batting if you don't do as they say. What kind of threat is "stay away from Windows or I won't tell you how to use Linux"? Now switch to Debian or I shall taunt you a second time!
I don't know if the bullet points as you've stated them are a completly accurate condensation of the administration's position (I'm sure they used more words, they're politicians after all), but I think it's worth showing what's wrong with them as presented.
# There is a scientifically measured indication of global warming.
This could probably stand as written. It would be more accurate to add that there is also scientifically measured indications of associated phenomina involving climate change in various directions (i.e. warmer here, dryer there, stormier or wetter a third place) as well, but that word associated is evidently one of the sticking points.
# There is scientific evidence of an increase in Carbon Dioxide content in the air.
This can stand as written.
# Is is presumed that the higher Carbon Dioxide is entirely the result of human industry.
This doesn't have to be assumed for the rest of the arguement. Some CO2 could be the result of natural processes, some from human industry,and the results would still follow. Splitting hairs over whether all, or most, or only a significant part of the CO2 comes from industry is just that, splitting hairs, unless the human industrial fraction is tremendously low.
# It is a hypothesis that the industrial contribution of Carbon Dioxide has a direct and positive correlation to the measured global temperatures.
A hypothesis is not yet supported. When enough evidence is gathered and the hypothesis gains predictive power, it becomes a theory. Some theories are more well tested than others, and we could debate over just how well supported this one is, but it is definitely more developed than a hypothesis. Some theories have competing theories, but there is no such thing as scientific competition between a theory and an alternative hypothesis, and any arguement against the "Industrial CO2 contributes to global temperature rises" theory also needs to be developed into a theory, or it's worthless to consider.
# It is unknown if the current global warming trend is one that is an entirely natural cycle of the planet irregardless of human industrial contributions, a trend that is entirely the direct and full result of human industry, or some mixture between the two (human industry augmeting an already natural phenomenon)
I'd argue that we know it's likely to be the third category, by analogy with most other processes - very few complex things have only a single influencing factor. Again, it's splitting hairs unless the industrial portion of the causes is trivial compared to natural sources.
# There is no direct evidence or proof to indicate that a change in human industrial behaviour will have any effect on Carbon Dioxide emissions. (This is largely bullshit but you can't provide physical evidence until you do it and he doesn't want to).
This is technically true, but only in the same sense as "There is no direct evidence or proof that shooting Bob in the head will kill him". Even highly reliable causes cannot be assumed to always produce their typical effects, 100& of the time, and regardless of other as yet unspecified changes happening in the future.
# There is no evidence that a change in human industrial behaviour will have any impact on global warming, especially if it's an entirely natural phenomenon. (This is also largely bullshit because you can't test it. It also flies against basic logic that less human contribution will at the very least, not make the problem worse).
The "especially if" clause is all that makes the rest sound superficially plausible. Try even the weak counter-version "There is no evidence that a change in human industrial behavior will have any impact on global warming, even if it's a partly natural, partly industrial related phenomenon", to see how absurd it sounds. You have to assume in a dependant clause that it is impossible for a connection to exist first, before you can claim no evidence exists in the normally independant main portion of the sentence. That's not just bad science, it's bad grammer. If anyone in the Bush administration actually said this this way, the English teachers of the USA need to be up in arms faster than the scientists.
Read my question again. Do you know of a case where a single person has been convicted of conspiracy to commit X, where there are allegedly no other people involved to make it a conspiracy? FYI, an unindicted co-conspirator is invariably a witness for the prosecution, not a nonentity whose name and circumstances of involvement will be witheld from a jury in open court. There may be reasons why an "UCC" won't be prosecuted, but those same reasons are not simultaniously reasons why they can't be prosecuted, and lumping the two together as you did is disingenious. You still can't prosecute any members of a 'ring' as you put it, without showing that a ring existed. You can't tie people to a conspiracy without showing that at least two people communicated.
One of the taxes I'm referring to was added to everyone's phone bill. There are plenty of poor people who have a phone. I guess the poor's job is to pay for the rich's services and not recive any themselves. Frankly, I didn't play the rich vrs. poor card, you did, and considering where you played it you're making a great argument for classic Marxism. You just actually, really, and most sincerely said the equivalent of "let them eat cake!".
Another source of funding has been easments on broadcast bandwidth. The FCC has let phone and cable companies have lots of bandwidth cheap or rebated, based on build out promises. (And yes, the phone companies use lots of broadcast links). Those airwaves could have been sold for much more, easing the tax burden for everyone, rich or poor.
Both those are federally controlled rebates and taxes. Then there's the state situation. Both phone and cable co's have sponsored legislation or filed court petitions that prevent local governments from choosing to enter contracts in this field, bumping that up to the whole-state or regional level. So, in the name of capitalist freedom, they are advocating taking power away from local governments to give it to bigger governments. Then there's the cases where state tax rebates and land easments were contingent on a specific promise, such as wireing all the secondary schools in the area by 1997, oops 2001, oops 2004, oops...
The reason you don't see my point is you believe a whole lot about the classes that just plain isn't true. You've fallen for a corporate line of bull that says this is a class struggle, and the liberals are trying to buy votes with the productive class's money, and all that. It's not - it's about good old fashioned keeping one's promises.
(IANAL) Car metaphors are almost never cogent, but I see a bit of a point in that one. If you loan out something to a friend, and he fails to take good care with that something and it is stolen, you can sue either the friend or the thief, or both. It doesn't matter at all that in the example, the thief is also committing another crime (bank robbery).
Let me repeat, the robbery is totally irrelevant. The car thief could have taken a car from in front of a cleaners after lawfully picking up his laundry, and the civil issues don't change. The only crime the something's owner is concerned about in civil court is grand theft auto, and even that only matters if it lets the owner file for something such as triple punitive damages.
A person can certainly sue someone for taking something in a way that isn't criminal. (A and be are friends. A owns item X. B borrows X, with intent to return it. (B even leaves a note saying "A, I borrowed your X - I'll bring it back next Tuesday.). A can still sue B for damages, such as problems caused by A's not having X at a time when A needed it.)
As a matter of practicality, if a crime is also involved it's often better to wait until the criminal case is decided and all that evidence becomes a matter of record, already gathered at taxpayer expense and available for a civil suit, but it's not required (at least in most jurisdictions) either to wait out criminal courts or even for appropriate charges to be filed at all, before a person can file a suit.
What also may matter is what you may have already recovered from sueing one party. If your friend pays up for the car, costs of getting around until the car is replaced, and so on, then you are compensated. You can't get compensated again for the same damages by the crook, and if you did somehow get the court to award you damages a second time, you would normally have to give them back to your friend. Most times in such cases, the smart thing to do is to get the court to decide who has standing to file, and standing to recover from the crook, before going to civil court again.
I'm not sure what the original poster was getting at, but it kind of looks like 'he' is arguing that an RIAA suit isn't fitting that model in some way or other. I'd be interested, if that is what he means, to see if there's a real arguement for that position.
The Inalienable rights here are to have people treat with you honestly, and to own what you have paid for. The cable and phone companies got paid already by subsidies and special granted legal status to build in equal access. They got susidies to provide services. They got awards of bandwidth, easments on land, and taxes paid by customers and rebated to them - all this was justified by the corporate promises to put those funds into use increasing access. The companies promised things not just publicly, but in many cases under oath (while testifying before congress, for example). Now they are avoiding doing what they promised. If you offer to sell me a car for 5,000$, and you take the money and then refuse to hand over the car, that's fraud and theft. Fraud and theft is what taking the subsidies without doing what was promised amounts to, and yes, you have an inalienable right to resist being treated that way. I'm sorry you are giving your rights away, but please stop trying to give mine away too.
It's on my list, thanks.
IANAL, but something about this tells me that a decent lawyer could find something to get this evidence dismissed against both parties due to improper police handling of evidence.
IANALE (either), but it's called 'fruit of the poisonous tree'. Once evidence is obtained or handled unlawfuly, it stays unlawful.
For the case above, how can the grand jury charge two people with conspiracy to commit if one of them can't be charged at all? It takes at least two to make a conspiracy, which would be the crime the police think has in fact happened. The police can't lawfully describe what they think happened without naming the friend can they? So, they have to charge you with a crime other than the one they think happened.
They can't show that the evidence they have was always lawfully in their possesion and couldn't have been tampered with, because it was initially unlawfully obtained. if they leave your friend out, they have to purjure themselves on the stand. "Yes ladies and gentlemen, the defendant held a ladder for himself as he climbed into the second story window. Then he lowered the TV set to himself, whereupon he caught it. Then he stored it on his property, whee we found it.". They can't even legally call your friend a person or persons unknown, because a. they do know, and b. you know, and as defendant have wide leeway in introducing the claim that it was in fact the person they can't charge even if they don't want to bring that up.
What happens if you call your friend as a witness to say you were somewhere else when the crime happened? Do the cops prove he's lieing by evidence they are not allowed to use?
4. Nothing to hide -- if you're not expecially interesting to the government...
This is the one you CANT pick as an option. People have ended up on government watchlists for incredibly dumb reasons, such as having the same last name as another person, or being photographed in the background at a public event. Unless you know of a way to change your name to one that no one else will ever commit a crime under, or how to never be near where anything of government interest will happen, there is no guarenteed way to do option 4. Since either of those examples would take being able to predict the future, being 100% successful at it would be required - the government would be very interested indeed in a 90% successful psychic if they could catch one.
Recent studies on riots have shown that probably as many as 3 out of 4 people involved are just trying to slip away from the crowd, but want to do it gradually and casually because they fear pushing and shoving against the flow will draw the mob's attention to themselves. That fact alone means that there are lots of people currently on government watchlists who were effectively innocent of any intent. Even if we assume the police tend to concentrate on the more active leaders in a mob scenario, they are not going to be nearly 100% successful at singleing them out (if they were, they would have understood how many people just get tangled up in a riot many years ago, and we wouldn't have needed the studies).
One thing to remember here is that the standard conservative position is that it's desireable for the Supreme Court judges to read letters such as the one you reference to help determine the framer's original intent. It's the standard liberal position that the constitution is a living document - for text book liberals, that doesn't mean the court shouldn't refer to intent, but that intent doesn't always govern.
There are some very ignorant (or possibly just plain malicious) people who have started attacking the liberal viewpoint over the living document position - I say ignorant not because the 'original intent' position is necessarily wrong, but because they have opposed it by making original intent something the court should guess at in a near vacuum. Only certain other documents are supposed to be relevant to helping determine intent, and often judges who refer to other documents, such as the letter you mention, are falsely characterized as liberal activist judges who are not sticking with original intent at all.
So you've given a very good arguement for the user's right to copy being a natural right, and creator copyright for a limited term being a gift of social law. It's actually an old style conservative arguement. At this point, it's not conservative enough for the 'right wing', and half the Fox comentators would call you a liberal. Now for the 64 dollar question. How do we fix the copyright system, if we let someone re-define the centrist position so that it's to the right of practically every poster to this thread.
I'd be interested in knowing a few things about this article:
What type of disease were they postulating? Bacterium? Virus?
Does long ago mean 5,000 years, as in Egypt or Babylon, 50,000, as in Neandertal interaction period, or 500,000, as in pre Homo-Sapiens?
Then there was Thalidomide. It cause no increase in birth defect rates in any of the typical animal test species, such as mice, rabbits or pigs, which is why it was approved for human use. It wasn't until after the first human casualties were already being reported in Europe that a U.S. researcher got evidence of animal birth defects, and that took testing on exotics such as horses. The FDA employee who blocked sale in the US could only justify it as 'playing a hunch' and was almost fired before it turned out her hunch was right. How many animal test programs normally use expensive and slow reproducing creatures such as horses?
Plus there are plenty of confirmed cases where the person checking ID's doesn't know even the basics needed to judge - i.e. there really are some cops in the 48 contiguous U.S. states that think an Alaskan driver's liscence is from some other country, and not valid for driving in "America". There have been several cases recently of customs officers that refused to let people cross back from Mexico when they said they were Hawaiian, and the number of reported cases where someone in authority assumes that being from the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands or the Marshall Islands makes some person not a U.S. citizen grows literally daily.
Yes, some, maybe many, of these cases involve just plain dumbness, but some of them are the result of inevitably inadiquate training - for example, there are by my count at least 78 possible 2 letter postal codes for state abbreviations, all of which have appeared in just that form on some kinds of ID, and all of which, at times have been unaccompanied by the full name of the region to explain them. Does anyone want to guess what the 28 that aren't for US states are? What's PW? AE? MB? SK? CZ?
Try this one - Why should a U.S. cop stop and hold for investigation a driver showing a liscence with the code CZ as part of the address? Why shouldn't that same cop hold up one showing MB? (Here's a hint (that should make it even worse) - CZ is created by the US, and MB is of forign origin). No fair googling.
How much of a training program would it take to clarify this particular bit of esoterica to the people who all theoretically need to know it? How many other areas of expertese do our law enforcement agents need to know to this level, but don't? How many of those other areas are more likely to be immediate life or death issues for LE personnel? How on earth would we afford it all?
Like you, I don't support a unified ID, even though at first glance, it looks like it might make things easier. I don't, because in part, it won't really simplify complexities of law like these, but it will soak up a lot of money that could be spent training law enforcement to cope with them. Those complexities aren't going to go away because of a unified ID. They are still built into our legal system, and some of them are built into the world at large.
Small mammals tend to be pretty hardy and numerous, but so do small birds. Catastrophism is still valid theoretically, and you're certainly allowed to suggest a disaster affected things without it being unscientific speculation (witness the current dinosaur extinction theories). But, birds gradually winning out over mammals locally is not really far fetched either. If you start with something like mice and sparrows, and the sparrow's descendants fill the predator and large grazer niches just a little faster than the mice's do, it could end up all birds. In other places, birds get some of the niches, mammals others, and so in North America, there is no bat trying to fill the eagle or owl niche, and no flightless grazing bird even approaching the mass of a buffalo. As Gould kept insisting, contingency plays a big part.
The average lifespan for a big cat species is only about 4 million years. For other large predators about 7 to 8 million, and for large grazing herbivores of various sorts, around 12 to 20 million (medium sized antelope-likes tend to last longer than cape buffalo-likes, as species go.). Small mammals, such as rodents and ungulates, do tend to last relatively unchanged, and 16 million years is actually pretty reasonable for a mouse-like species, with even 20 to 24 million being possible. I'm using species here in a pretty rigorous way, meaning full interbreeding would be commonly possible between generations separated by those millions of years. (If they just built a mouse sized time machine that is). You can stretch those numbers some, if you mean the new generation is descended from the first one and still looks pretty much like them, but scientists aren't sure about breeding ability, for one reason or another.
4 to 4.5 million years ago, our Human ancestors were probably still Chimpanzee ancestors as well. You could probably justify calling the family tree great apes at least as far back as 10 million years, but 16 million years ago, we may be talking about something that was lesser ape or even average monkey sized. It's even possible that we're talking about a creature weighing 20 Kg. or less as a typical adult. Yes that's still a "very much lot" larger than a mouse, but claiming "great ape" instead of "moderately bulky lemur" may be pushing it.
Scientists tend to reject remote chances near automatically when it comes to fossils. Since only about 1 creature in 100 million or so ever gets found in fossil form (addmitedly a rough average), the odds of that also being a 1 in 100 million exception for other reasons become very much astronomical (or even just a one in a million chance does). If we have only 6 Foobarasaurus Smex fossils that are close enough to full skeletons to judge size well, and there were probably 600 million of them during the whole time the species was around, what are the odds that one of those six is the biggest single specimen that ever lived? In the same way, what are the odds that one of those six died from being struck by lightning?
When I heard the horrible screams from what those puns were doing to your parents, I had to stuff my fingers in my ears just to sleep. Now I can't hear anything, so I say making puns ought to be a deaf penalty offense.
Now your computer can act like you first thing in the morning. HAL, here we come!
You mean, If HAL had just stopped for a cup of coffee, both astronauts would have ended up drifting into space? Then HAL could have finished the mission alone, and the last report would have been "My Chandra, it's full of binary stars!".
Except 'our' side doesn say the right should be "taken from this person" after a time, at all. We (most of us) do support a limited right being given for a time, and then reverting to the public. If that's "taking", then so is you repossessing rental property after the rental period. It's not theft to recover your own property (the natural right to copy being the property we are talking about), after the period you granted that right to another expires.
"Whahhh!" says the citizen - "He said I could walk across his land this one time, and after I did, he won't let me do it again. He's "taken" my 'accessright'". "Boo-hoo-hoo" says the state, "I incarcerated him for the time the court allowed, and now he wants out just because his 28 year sentence is over. He's "taken" my 'Incarcerationright'".
Rights are controlled, transferred or restricted only for limited times all the time in law. If something had to be "taken" to support reversion to the previous right holder, then every limited time right entailed a theft somewhere. Congratulations, you've just proved that property is theft, so please rename yourself P. J. Proudhon, or turn yourself in for having violated his copyright.
It's less than nothing - the unions have an existing contract with the automakers. The artists have a unilateral extension granted by congress, revising the earlier (social) contract in favor of just one party. With the last cycle of extensions, congress took away, (on average) your right to copy, plus your kid's rights unless and until they live past age 60, your grand-kids rights until they are about 40, and your great-grand-kid's rights until they are about 20. That's what the term 'life+70' years really amounts to. That's what the parent poster was talking about, and what you are ignoring.