I thought the purpose of a 'religion' as loosely as it can be defined, was to reach out.
That depends entirely on whether the religion is exoteric (reaching out) or esoteric (restricted to the initiated). Unless you want to argue that cults are esoteric and relgions are exoteric, but that is 'argument by definition,' a backdoor by which to bring the connotation, 'cults are evil, religions are good,' into play.
Why would Scientology try to 'patent' their way of religion.
They're not. They are merely asserting the copyright (!=patent) which automatically arises by virtue of the authorship of these documents. Admitedly, they are doing this with a purpose for which copyright was not originally intended (ie to mitigate the 'free rider' externality), but rather to stifle adverse publicity. Crafty people, those lawyers. It's times like that where 'freedom of speech' guarantees reveal their necessity (of course crafty lawyers can twist those to evil purposes as well). Further, I'm far from convinced that Christian, Islamic or even Buddhist ministries, if faced with virulent criticism, would not avail themselves of the legal opportunity the defendant presented to the CoS.
I doubt that unclean hands per se will be of any relevence here. To be perfectly pedantic the 'unclean hands' doctrine is not a legal one, but an equitable one. It is usually expressed thus: He who comes into equity must come with clean hands. Aimster, however, does not seem to be seeking equitable relief, but rather relying on the statutory provisions of the DCMA
The point you raise about illegally gathered evidence is interesting and probably the crux of the whole scheme. It seems to me, however, that the protection the DMCA apparently affords here would not survive discovery.
To be perfectly fair you should have compared over a range such as '92 to '99, not some year before and some year fater the controls (why choose '95 and '99??). Nonetheless, you're position, as you can see, can be put much more credibly if you take the time to consult the official statistics, rather than relying on NRA FUD.
On the whole the results, while in some cases significant, are not really dramatic enough to warrant saying that firearms controls have been a causative factor, either in reducing or in exacerbating crime. Indeed the best the proponents of the controls can point to is that the spate of mass killing sprees, such as Porth Arthur (the reason for the control regime), have come to an end... so far.
Murder's down though...
And murder, of course, enjoys a singular significance in criminological data, being perhaps the only offence which gives any reliable comparison over time. Other offences are affected by varible reporting and enforcement rates, as well as legislative change. (Eg the common law crime of 'Rape' no longer exists in NSW.) If you looked at the examination of firearm deaths in Australia published by the Aust. Inst of Criminology you will see that such deaths from assault (ie not accident, suicide etc) even before the firearms controls were instituted were only in the order of 100 per year (ca. 0.5 deaths per 100,000 population). These figures are fairly low that it's difficult place much meaning on the minor reduction since the controls were introduced. I would be interested in the US figures, which I venture, would bring into question the validity of applying the Australian stats to the US situation.
To make my own position clear. I am neither a gun-freak, nor a gun-control freak. I like guns, but I don't like the killing of human beings, so while I was prepared to accept the banning of military assault rifles, I think the governments overstepped the mark by banning any semi-auto down to and including the humble 22. I know if I was going to try to better Martin Bryant's world-record, I'd want something with a bit more grunt than that. Sigh... guess it's just another record the Yanks are gonna try to take off us Aussies again... actually with the firepower you've got over there, your attempts are pretty embarrasing. Still if you send schoolboys to do a grown homocidal maniac's job...
>And there's the old truism that "you can't regulate the internet, it's global". >The problem is that when every country
in the world has passed the DMCA there's nowhere left to go
I doubt that'll happen. Once it gets down to a few, then suddenly freedom of communication will become a viable competitive factor for nations...
Unfortuantely the globalisation of Intellectual Propery Regimes is well underway. Now that a protocol called TRIPS has been included in the WTO charter, international IP has real teeth... if you don't play ball you get cut out of world trade! That was how India was forced to grant patents on pharmaceuticals (while they had patent laws they always insisted on the need for cheap medicine given a large and largely poor population), it was how Brazil was forced to drop a law which stipulated that the active agent in pharmaceuticals had to be printed on the packaging in a larger font than the brand name - educated consumers amount to a denial of the intellectual property rights of manufacturers.
Now while I can't find any anti-circumvention clause in TRIPS itself, I suspect that the Australian legislation so closely mirrors the US Act because it arises from some interantional agreement. I say this because it appears to me that this cannot be a valid law of the Commonwealth (ie it would be ultra vires) under s51(xviii) of the because the meaning of "Copyright" is limited as explained by the High Court in AG v Brewery Employees Union(1908) 6 CLR 469, admitedly an old case (and a trade mark case), but one which to my knowledge has never been overruled. It would seem too long a bow to draw to bring it under the telegraphy power (s51(v)).
Now it may be, of course, that this act is simply unconstitutional, but I suspect that there is an international agreement somewhere which places such legislation within the power of the C'wealth. Beyond this it must be borne in mind that the same industries which lobby (&fund) US politicians do so in Australia and in almost any democracy where money talks. (Which also explains the willingness of governments to enter international arrangements so favourable to those industries) A senior Murdoch executive once described the Australian Government as "a wholly owned subsidiary of News Corp."
You're right, of course, there will always be some nations who will not go along. But these are likely to be places such as Iraq or Afghanistan (or whosoever happens to be a Pariah state at the time). Not the sort of places one would care to do business perhaps.
home invasions have risen by 800% or some vulgar amount since then.
You believe that?! Lemme guess -- you were born yesterday. What did happen is that the NRA so fraudulently misused Australian crime statistics, that the Federal Attorney-General was led to make an official complaint.
Should you wish to get your information from a more^H^H^H^H reputable source, try the NSW
Bureau of Crime Statistics for NSW (which includes Australia's most "crime-ridden city," Sydney {Shock! Horror!!}). More generally check out the Australian Institute of Criminology. [It] is scary... shit just how gullible some people are.
I take offense at this, I am not a smelly hippy, nor am I a professional protestor, nor am I a do-gooder, I live in Australia.
If you live in Australia you really should not need the irony/irony tags, should you? Or are you a recent blow-in? I thought my own position on the matter would have been clearly flagged by my description of the centres as "concentration camps." I am stunned that anyone could so badly misread my post as to take umbrage in this way. My point was that mainstream Australians, while they may be cynical about politicians, are not overly concerned about the abuses of state power.
Don't make blanket statements about populations that you obviously don't know everything about.
sarcasmI reserve the right to make blanket statements about populations I know almost everything about./sarcasm
Besides which, of what possible relevance are your opinions when it comes to assessing the popular sentiment of mainstream Australia? Your rabid opposition to gun control puts you against the 87% or so of the population who were in favour of it. Moreover, your belief that firearms are for "self defense" (sic) places you in the even smaller minority of crazies who think that guns are for killing people --there not, they're for killing rabbits, wild pigs and assorted other vermin. (NOTE: I am writing only of the Austrlian context. In the US, guns clearly are for killing people). Admit it, your not a local, you're a seppo, aren't ya mate?
Critical as I am of the political culture which denigrates civil liberties and privileges the hip-pocket, I must express my relief that your ideology remains that of the lunatic fringe in this country. Note further that I have recorded your/. id and that I will pass it on to the Australian Federal Police should you make good your threat to begin bombing government buildings.
The 50's was a time in which people were less cynical of government than today, and hence were more willing to believe that civil servants were to be trusted unquestioningly.
People in Australia aren't at all cynical of government, only politicians and political parties. They are, in general, quite supportive of increased police powers, and increased government regulation of all kinds. Sure there is a vocal crowd who oppose such things as keeping refugees in concentration camps, but these are (smelly hippies || professional protestors || 'do-gooders') and hardly reflect a general Australian cynicism in state control. Sadly, it may be the case that attempts to censor the net enjoy general support.
Perhaps more importantly the influence of the churches, who were the driving force behind the genocidal policies of the past, has faded. (Well except in NSW, which is being run by a consortium of the Vatican and the editorial board of the Daily Telegraph).
I should have a legal right to do whatever I want with the CDs.
One would have to examine the text of the legislation or contract under which this is to instituted. I suspect, however, you would find that the fee would allow the purchasor to make copies for their own use (permissible in some common law jurisdictions in any case), but not for commercial use.
Just because you gave them money, doesn't mean they're going to give anything back.
I disagree. It's a quid pro quo, you've paid for the right to copy, you've should have the right to copy. It is a characteristic of copyright that it is assignable, and if the manufacturers are charged this fee, explicitly to pay for the potential copying of material, the right would seem to have been assigned.
Capitalism does not necessarily imply corporations. You can have the benefits of capitalism without creating [corporations].
But can you? Sure, capitalism existed long before the state created the corporation. The mischief the legislature sought to address in creating the legal person of the limited liability corporation, however, was capitalism's inability to raise funds sufficient for the really large scale projects which became technologically possible following the industrial revolution.
Imagine investing in the joint-stock company of pre-corporate times. This is essentially a partnership, in which each investor is jointly and severally liable for the misdeeds of the company. Unlike investment in a limited liability corporation, where (as an investor) the most you can lose is your investment, the creditors of the joint-stock company could come after you (possibly you alone) and claim anything you owned until the debt was paid. Would you invest in such a non-corporate company? (So much for a world of pure contract.)
Sure the modern corporation might be said to be "evil" (inasmuch as this is appropriatetly predicated to a non-natural person), in that it exercises domination over natural individuals. In part this stems from the very ability to raise capital and the resultant conglomeration of power. Power which rivals (and nowadays even outstrips) that possessed by the state. Beyond this, the core aim of a corporation, to maximise the investment of abstract shareholders, means that it is legally oblidged to disregard the public interest where this diverges (except in some places [Massachusetts??] where the corporations law has been explicitly amended to allow 'socially beneficial' activities). People attack Phillip Morris for spending more on advertising about the charity they give out, than on that charity itself, for targeting favourite charities of key legislators etc etc. Aren't they are supposed to be ruthlessly pursuing the interests of their shareholders? (Truly pure corporate philanthropy is a dubious proposition -- how can the directors justify giving away money that belongs to the shareholders?)
You are right to stress that the corporation is not an inevitability. In fact it is the creation of legislatures, and the expression (to varying degrees in different countries) of the democratic process. It is in fact a semi-public thing -- limited liability is a subsidy granted to corporations by the people in return for the possiblity of large scale development. Now, when MegaCorp(tm)(c) threatens democracy itself, we should not ignore democracy's capacity to shape the corporation. Rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater, as you seem to be suggesting, we might want to consider ways in which corporate power can be tamed, without losing the benefits which limited liability, and its corollary, corporate personality, bestow.
On the other hand, perhaps we should have all really major devlopment under direct democratic control. P
I seriously doubt, if a more abundant and hardy breed of rice is created to feed the world's hungry, that many third world inhabitants are
going to turn down food on the basis that it's "unnatural".
I seriously doubt, if an expensive patented gene technology will ever find its way into the stomachs of the world's hungry. Or was this an open-source project?
And most importantly nowadays, TRIPS, which is annexed to the WTO treaty. This give internation IP real bite since you can effectively be excluded from world trade if you don't play ball.
John Locke's political
writings are pretty much the basis for the constitution of the USA. And it is an economic fact that scarcity preceeds property.
Well Locke's theory of property was that "the act of creation" (or more precisely the admixture of Labour and Nature) brings property into existence, not scarcity. The piece is so badly written, however, that the author seems to imply the opposite.
Here's what Locke wrote:
... every Man has a Property in his own
Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we must say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the State that Nature hath provided, and left in it, he hath mixed his Labour with, and joyned to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his Property. It being by him removed from the common state Nature placed it in, hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other Men.
The propertarian argument in favour of IP is that such an argument can also be extended to the products of people's intelligence. On this view the limited duration of various species of IP amounts to nothing less than an illegitimate expropriation by the state.
I should note that this is not a view that I would personally endorse, (unless of course I was being paid to do so.:P)
What's the point, Microsoft will just come out with a new version
Too right! I used to try too keep up with.doc 2.txt (or rtf or html) translators, but I've just given up. Now if I receive a.doc attachement, the sender gets an angry "This is a non-Microsoft site, please resend you mail in a readible format." To one persistent re-offender I sent as an attachment the output of cat/dev/urandom > urgent.doc.
This whole free speech thing has gone too far in the wrong direction. Censorship is bad, when it is by the goverment. When a person, or company, decides to censor themselves is should be their right.
This is not about a person self-censoring, it's about a person censoring others who use that person's communication services.
Only the most dogmatic libertarian could insist that censorship is bad merely because it constitutes an exercise of state power directed against private persons. Rather, censorship is bad because it impedes the free flow of ideas and information. It is true, that the state, having the monopoly of legislative power has traditionally had a greater opportunity effectively to censor. It would, however, be no less undesirable if, to give a concrete example, Microsoft decided to build a filter into IE, with the purpose of blocking any site containing the word 'Linux.' Corporate constraint of individual expression, all other things being equal, is also (potentially) "bad." It is true also, and this would seem to be the point of your argument, that the situation with regard to privately owned services is complicated by the property rights of service owners (ie all other things are not equal). Telling an owner not to censor content seems to amount to little more than forcing them to carry certain content. Such complication, however, seems unlikely to be resolved by the application of unthinking slogans such as "all information must be free," or "property is paramount." In any case, desirable as property law might be, other consideration do, on occasion, call for the media to be "forced" to carry certain information.
At a time in history when the state is in retreat and the power of corporations grows beyond restraint, it is blinkered ideology stubbornly to cling to a theory of free speech (though it may have been perfectly servicable in the 18th century) which is able to see government alone as having the potential to supress freedom of communication. As free speech theorist Richard Able has recently pointed out (and he speaks from experience), in the contemporary world (at least in western democracies) it is private constraints on speech which are "more powerful and pervasive than state censorship." (see his Speaking Respect, Respecting Speech).
If the owners of services which carry the communications of individuals choose to censor those communications, whether merely out of undue deference to various cultural sensitivities, or more directly as an exercise of power, the result is an insipid, deformed, and at worst systematically biased public discourse. This is as inimical to democracy as it is to cultural development itself. A world in which Bill Gates and Rupert Murdoch are left free to determine which ideas and information the rest of us are to be exposed to, and which ideas will be kept from us, seems no more desirably than one in which such decisions are made by officials amenable to democratic control. If, as a society (or societies) we decide that certain information ought not to be free (as is almost universally the case with child pornography), it would seem to me better that such a decision is made (and is reversible) by democratic means.
Maybe traffic jams are all set-up by the oil cartels.
Hmmmm... It's probably just an urban myth, but there is the old story of how a consortium of Standard Oil, Bridgestone Tyres and General Motors bought the public rail system of a major city, scrapped the trains, and replaced it with a bus system using General Motors Buses equipped with Bridgestone Tyres and running on Standard Oil. Eventually they realise that they can sell many more vehicles, tyres and fuel, if they get rid of the buses and replace them with... er traffic jams.
Political persecution and intolerance continues to thrive in the good old fatherland.... Freedom of speech? What's that?
A value which the US, in practically imposing a constitution on the Federal Republic after the war, apparently did not regard as being of greater importance than the prevention of nazi recidivism.
That is the most ludicrous thing I've ever heard of.
You just don't get out enough.:)
Though I have not read the judgement, I understand that the ruling merely reverses the lower court's misconception that the location of the server placed the matter outside the court's jurisdicition (now that would be ludicrous), it is enought that the message is broadcast to Germans in Germany.
How do they intend to compel the Aussie to go to Germany to stand trial?
The usual way would be to issue a request for extradition. However, the double-criminality rule (ie that the crime must exist both in the requesting and the extradting state), which I believe forms part of the law of Australia, would seem to render extradition unlikely. One does not imagine that the offence Tobin (aka Toebin) is being charged with is a crime in Australia. Indeed his is arguably the kind of political communication which is afforded protection by the Australian Constitution.
I doubt, however, whether the German court entertained the slightest concern about how or if Tobin would be brought back to stand trial. It is the more important question, regarding the internet and the jurisdiction of German courts, that is being addressed here.
I guess it goes
to show that wacky court rulings are not limited to the US. ?
Indeed, "wacky" rulings are not a monopoly of the US courts. I'm sure you'll find though, that such rulings are far more common in the (mis)conceptions of lay commentators, than in any actual justice system.
Can you please provide a viable libel case from some time past 1980 to demonstrate that your case law is at least trying to live
in the same century as the rest of us?
1. You mean you're in the same century as the 1980's, but not the 1930s or 1960s. Man I know there are all these folks running around thinking they're already in the 21st Century, but what century do you think you're in?:P
2. Look, I'll cite Tuberville v Savage (1669) 86 ER 684 (which happens still to be good law in my jurisdiction), if it'll help me argue my case (though I'll conceed, it won't be of much help in a libel case). "Your caselaw is old" does not strike me as a particlarly convincing legal argument. Maybe you could try citing some newer stuff which shows how these cases have been overturned or modified.
3. To help you on your way: You might want to argue that Philadelhia Newspapers v Hepps 475 US 767 (1986) together with Milkovich v Lorain Journal Co 497 US 1 (1990), by displacing the common law 'fair comment' defence with a constitutional 'defence' of pure opinion (or at least opinion not implying false facts) + public concern, has raised the bar for plaintiffs in defamation actions. Against this (given the argument is about comparative restrictions on speech across national jurisdictions), you would also have to take into account the various modified 'comment' defences in different national jurisdictions. See for instance the exspansive 'comment' defence that arises from the wide meaning the Privy Council gave to 'public interest' and 'information' in reading a New South Wales statute; Austin v Mirror Newspapers [1986] AC 299; re s22 Defamation Act 1974 (NSW).
Further one has to consider other cross-jurisdictional impairments to free speech. In the US, for instance there still survive some species of tort which protect the privacy of individuals. Admitedly the tort of unreasonable publicization of private facts has probably been buried by Florida Star v BFJ 491 US 524 (1989), the tort of false light, on the other hand, would still seem to be afoot. Elsewhere in the common law world such protection of privacy is virtually unknown (see Kaye v Robertson ANOR [1991] FSR 62), though there have been some stirring in New Zealand Courts that such American torts might be developing there (esp. Tucker v New Media Ownership [1986] 2 NZLR 716)
Of the communist societies that have existed in history,
all of them have reserved the ownership of all property to the state (though they have not always exercised that reservation).
Most times this exercise of control has come down to declaring with the barrel of a gun that "what is under your domain of
control now belongs to the state, because we say so".
If there ever has existed a communist society, it has only been in the form of a 'primitive' tribal society in which no state and no property exists (the definition of communism). I'll take it that you are speaking of authoriatrian state socialist regimes, run by nominally communist parties...
Of the capitalist societies that exist, all of them have reserved the ownership of most property to private individuals (they almost invariable do excercise that reservation). Again what stops X from taking my Porsche is a system of property law underwritten by the coercive apparatus of the state. The barrel of the gun (of the police) is operative there too. The necessity of a police force and of a prison system, demonstrates that 'human nature' (if there is such a thing) is not such as to accept this particular arrangement of property relations.
Only the initiation of force is coercion.
This might be arguable in terms of bodily self-defence, but when you use it with regard to property, you are making the unwarranted and fatal assumption that 'property' is simply something natural, that arises quite unproblematically between individuals (a la Locke) without the application of state force.
There are libel and slander laws in the U.S., but the bar for libel is extrordinarily high
Hello? This is the country where you could succeed in a libel action based on the publication of a photograph, merely because a strap hanging from a saddle in the background could be seen hanging between plaintiff's legs Burton v Crowell Publishing. You might be correct that in regard to public figures the bar has been substantially raised by NYT v Sullivan.
The devil is in the detail too, when you consider the court based exceptions to the first amendment (Go back and look at the 'clear and present danger' cases Schenck v. US, Abrams v. US etc), the rather partisan (poltical) nature of free speech becomes apparent. Back then it was anarchists in the US, now its neo-nazis in France....
Slashdot Mirror
That depends entirely on whether the religion is exoteric (reaching out) or esoteric (restricted to the initiated). Unless you want to argue that cults are esoteric and relgions are exoteric, but that is 'argument by definition,' a backdoor by which to bring the connotation, 'cults are evil, religions are good,' into play.
Why would Scientology try to 'patent' their way of religion.They're not. They are merely asserting the copyright (!=patent) which automatically arises by virtue of the authorship of these documents. Admitedly, they are doing this with a purpose for which copyright was not originally intended (ie to mitigate the 'free rider' externality), but rather to stifle adverse publicity. Crafty people, those lawyers. It's times like that where 'freedom of speech' guarantees reveal their necessity (of course crafty lawyers can twist those to evil purposes as well). Further, I'm far from convinced that Christian, Islamic or even Buddhist ministries, if faced with virulent criticism, would not avail themselves of the legal opportunity the defendant presented to the CoS.
I doubt that unclean hands per se will be of any relevence here. To be perfectly pedantic the 'unclean hands' doctrine is not a legal one, but an equitable one. It is usually expressed thus: He who comes into equity must come with clean hands. Aimster, however, does not seem to be seeking equitable relief, but rather relying on the statutory provisions of the DCMA
The point you raise about illegally gathered evidence is interesting and probably the crux of the whole scheme. It seems to me, however, that the protection the DMCA apparently affords here would not survive discovery.
Thank You.
To be perfectly fair you should have compared over a range such as '92 to '99, not some year before and some year fater the controls (why choose '95 and '99??). Nonetheless, you're position, as you can see, can be put much more credibly if you take the time to consult the official statistics, rather than relying on NRA FUD.
On the whole the results, while in some cases significant, are not really dramatic enough to warrant saying that firearms controls have been a causative factor, either in reducing or in exacerbating crime. Indeed the best the proponents of the controls can point to is that the spate of mass killing sprees, such as Porth Arthur (the reason for the control regime), have come to an end ... so far.
Murder's down though...And murder, of course, enjoys a singular significance in criminological data, being perhaps the only offence which gives any reliable comparison over time. Other offences are affected by varible reporting and enforcement rates, as well as legislative change. (Eg the common law crime of 'Rape' no longer exists in NSW.) If you looked at the examination of firearm deaths in Australia published by the Aust. Inst of Criminology you will see that such deaths from assault (ie not accident, suicide etc) even before the firearms controls were instituted were only in the order of 100 per year (ca. 0.5 deaths per 100,000 population). These figures are fairly low that it's difficult place much meaning on the minor reduction since the controls were introduced. I would be interested in the US figures, which I venture, would bring into question the validity of applying the Australian stats to the US situation.
To make my own position clear. I am neither a gun-freak, nor a gun-control freak. I like guns, but I don't like the killing of human beings, so while I was prepared to accept the banning of military assault rifles, I think the governments overstepped the mark by banning any semi-auto down to and including the humble 22. I know if I was going to try to better Martin Bryant's world-record, I'd want something with a bit more grunt than that. Sigh ... guess it's just another record the Yanks are gonna try to take off us Aussies again ... actually with the firepower you've got over there, your attempts are pretty embarrasing. Still if you send schoolboys to do a grown homocidal maniac's job ...
>The problem is that when every country in the world has passed the DMCA there's nowhere left to go
I doubt that'll happen.
Once it gets down to a few, then suddenly freedom of communication will become a viable competitive factor for nations
Unfortuantely the globalisation of Intellectual Propery Regimes is well underway. Now that a protocol called TRIPS has been included in the WTO charter, international IP has real teeth ... if you don't play ball you get cut out of world trade! That was how India was forced to grant patents on pharmaceuticals (while they had patent laws they always insisted on the need for cheap medicine given a large and largely poor population), it was how Brazil was forced to drop a law which stipulated that the active agent in pharmaceuticals had to be printed on the packaging in a larger font than the brand name - educated consumers amount to a denial of the intellectual property rights of manufacturers.
Now while I can't find any anti-circumvention clause in TRIPS itself, I suspect that the Australian legislation so closely mirrors the US Act because it arises from some interantional agreement. I say this because it appears to me that this cannot be a valid law of the Commonwealth (ie it would be ultra vires) under s51(xviii) of the because the meaning of "Copyright" is limited as explained by the High Court in AG v Brewery Employees Union(1908) 6 CLR 469, admitedly an old case (and a trade mark case), but one which to my knowledge has never been overruled. It would seem too long a bow to draw to bring it under the telegraphy power (s51(v)).
Now it may be, of course, that this act is simply unconstitutional, but I suspect that there is an international agreement somewhere which places such legislation within the power of the C'wealth. Beyond this it must be borne in mind that the same industries which lobby (&fund) US politicians do so in Australia and in almost any democracy where money talks. (Which also explains the willingness of governments to enter international arrangements so favourable to those industries) A senior Murdoch executive once described the Australian Government as "a wholly owned subsidiary of News Corp."
You're right, of course, there will always be some nations who will not go along. But these are likely to be places such as Iraq or Afghanistan (or whosoever happens to be a Pariah state at the time). Not the sort of places one would care to do business perhaps.
You believe that?! Lemme guess -- you were born yesterday. What did happen is that the NRA so fraudulently misused Australian crime statistics, that the Federal Attorney-General was led to make an official complaint.
Should you wish to get your information from a more^H^H^H^H reputable source, try the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics for NSW (which includes Australia's most "crime-ridden city," Sydney {Shock! Horror!!}). More generally check out the Australian Institute of Criminology. [It] is scary... shit just how gullible some people are.
Very cute, now if it had MOOcode as a scripting language I might consider using it ... on the last friday of every month.
If you live in Australia you really should not need the irony/irony tags, should you? Or are you a recent blow-in? I thought my own position on the matter would have been clearly flagged by my description of the centres as "concentration camps." I am stunned that anyone could so badly misread my post as to take umbrage in this way. My point was that mainstream Australians, while they may be cynical about politicians, are not overly concerned about the abuses of state power.
Don't make blanket statements about populations that you obviously don't know everything about.sarcasmI reserve the right to make blanket statements about populations I know almost everything about./sarcasm Besides which, of what possible relevance are your opinions when it comes to assessing the popular sentiment of mainstream Australia? Your rabid opposition to gun control puts you against the 87% or so of the population who were in favour of it. Moreover, your belief that firearms are for "self defense" (sic) places you in the even smaller minority of crazies who think that guns are for killing people --there not, they're for killing rabbits, wild pigs and assorted other vermin. (NOTE: I am writing only of the Austrlian context. In the US, guns clearly are for killing people). Admit it, your not a local, you're a seppo, aren't ya mate?
Critical as I am of the political culture which denigrates civil liberties and privileges the hip-pocket, I must express my relief that your ideology remains that of the lunatic fringe in this country. Note further that I have recorded your /. id and that I will pass it on to the Australian Federal Police should you make good your threat to begin bombing government buildings.
People in Australia aren't at all cynical of government, only politicians and political parties. They are, in general, quite supportive of increased police powers, and increased government regulation of all kinds. Sure there is a vocal crowd who oppose such things as keeping refugees in concentration camps, but these are (smelly hippies || professional protestors || 'do-gooders') and hardly reflect a general Australian cynicism in state control. Sadly, it may be the case that attempts to censor the net enjoy general support.
Perhaps more importantly the influence of the churches, who were the driving force behind the genocidal policies of the past, has faded. (Well except in NSW, which is being run by a consortium of the Vatican and the editorial board of the Daily Telegraph).
Yes, but this is not the Aussie government as a whole, it's the government of the State of South Australia.
One would have to examine the text of the legislation or contract under which this is to instituted. I suspect, however, you would find that the fee would allow the purchasor to make copies for their own use (permissible in some common law jurisdictions in any case), but not for commercial use.
I disagree. It's a quid pro quo, you've paid for the right to copy, you've should have the right to copy. It is a characteristic of copyright that it is assignable, and if the manufacturers are charged this fee, explicitly to pay for the potential copying of material, the right would seem to have been assigned.
Capitalism does not necessarily imply corporations. You can have the benefits of capitalism without creating [corporations].
But can you? Sure, capitalism existed long before the state created the corporation. The mischief the legislature sought to address in creating the legal person of the limited liability corporation, however, was capitalism's inability to raise funds sufficient for the really large scale projects which became technologically possible following the industrial revolution.
Imagine investing in the joint-stock company of pre-corporate times. This is essentially a partnership, in which each investor is jointly and severally liable for the misdeeds of the company. Unlike investment in a limited liability corporation, where (as an investor) the most you can lose is your investment, the creditors of the joint-stock company could come after you (possibly you alone) and claim anything you owned until the debt was paid. Would you invest in such a non-corporate company? (So much for a world of pure contract.)
Sure the modern corporation might be said to be "evil" (inasmuch as this is appropriatetly predicated to a non-natural person), in that it exercises domination over natural individuals. In part this stems from the very ability to raise capital and the resultant conglomeration of power. Power which rivals (and nowadays even outstrips) that possessed by the state. Beyond this, the core aim of a corporation, to maximise the investment of abstract shareholders, means that it is legally oblidged to disregard the public interest where this diverges (except in some places [Massachusetts??] where the corporations law has been explicitly amended to allow 'socially beneficial' activities). People attack Phillip Morris for spending more on advertising about the charity they give out, than on that charity itself, for targeting favourite charities of key legislators etc etc. Aren't they are supposed to be ruthlessly pursuing the interests of their shareholders? (Truly pure corporate philanthropy is a dubious proposition -- how can the directors justify giving away money that belongs to the shareholders?)
You are right to stress that the corporation is not an inevitability. In fact it is the creation of legislatures, and the expression (to varying degrees in different countries) of the democratic process. It is in fact a semi-public thing -- limited liability is a subsidy granted to corporations by the people in return for the possiblity of large scale development. Now, when MegaCorp(tm)(c) threatens democracy itself, we should not ignore democracy's capacity to shape the corporation. Rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater, as you seem to be suggesting, we might want to consider ways in which corporate power can be tamed, without losing the benefits which limited liability, and its corollary, corporate personality, bestow.
On the other hand, perhaps we should have all really major devlopment under direct democratic control.   ;P
It is socialist! :P
I seriously doubt, if a more abundant and hardy breed of rice is created to feed the world's hungry, that many third world inhabitants are going to turn down food on the basis that it's "unnatural".
I seriously doubt, if an expensive patented gene technology will ever find its way into the stomachs of the world's hungry. Or was this an open-source project?
And most importantly nowadays, TRIPS, which is annexed to the WTO treaty. This give internation IP real bite since you can effectively be excluded from world trade if you don't play ball.
Sorry, I negleted to give a citation for that quote. It is from Book II of Locke's Two Treatises of Government, at sn. 27.
John Locke's political writings are pretty much the basis for the constitution of the USA. And it is an economic fact that scarcity preceeds property.
Well Locke's theory of property was that "the act of creation" (or more precisely the admixture of Labour and Nature) brings property into existence, not scarcity. The piece is so badly written, however, that the author seems to imply the opposite.
Here's what Locke wrote:
The propertarian argument in favour of IP is that such an argument can also be extended to the products of people's intelligence. On this view the limited duration of various species of IP amounts to nothing less than an illegitimate expropriation by the state.
I should note that this is not a view that I would personally endorse, (unless of course I was being paid to do so. :P)
Too right! I used to try too keep up with .doc 2 .txt (or rtf or html) translators, but I've just given up. Now if I receive a .doc attachement, the sender gets an angry "This is a non-Microsoft site, please resend you mail in a readible format." To one persistent re-offender I sent as an attachment the output of cat /dev/urandom > urgent.doc.
This is not about a person self-censoring, it's about a person censoring others who use that person's communication services.
Only the most dogmatic libertarian could insist that censorship is bad merely because it constitutes an exercise of state power directed against private persons. Rather, censorship is bad because it impedes the free flow of ideas and information. It is true, that the state, having the monopoly of legislative power has traditionally had a greater opportunity effectively to censor. It would, however, be no less undesirable if, to give a concrete example, Microsoft decided to build a filter into IE, with the purpose of blocking any site containing the word 'Linux.' Corporate constraint of individual expression, all other things being equal, is also (potentially) "bad." It is true also, and this would seem to be the point of your argument, that the situation with regard to privately owned services is complicated by the property rights of service owners (ie all other things are not equal). Telling an owner not to censor content seems to amount to little more than forcing them to carry certain content. Such complication, however, seems unlikely to be resolved by the application of unthinking slogans such as "all information must be free," or "property is paramount." In any case, desirable as property law might be, other consideration do, on occasion, call for the media to be "forced" to carry certain information.
At a time in history when the state is in retreat and the power of corporations grows beyond restraint, it is blinkered ideology stubbornly to cling to a theory of free speech (though it may have been perfectly servicable in the 18th century) which is able to see government alone as having the potential to supress freedom of communication. As free speech theorist Richard Able has recently pointed out (and he speaks from experience), in the contemporary world (at least in western democracies) it is private constraints on speech which are "more powerful and pervasive than state censorship." (see his Speaking Respect, Respecting Speech).
If the owners of services which carry the communications of individuals choose to censor those communications, whether merely out of undue deference to various cultural sensitivities, or more directly as an exercise of power, the result is an insipid, deformed, and at worst systematically biased public discourse. This is as inimical to democracy as it is to cultural development itself. A world in which Bill Gates and Rupert Murdoch are left free to determine which ideas and information the rest of us are to be exposed to, and which ideas will be kept from us, seems no more desirably than one in which such decisions are made by officials amenable to democratic control. If, as a society (or societies) we decide that certain information ought not to be free (as is almost universally the case with child pornography), it would seem to me better that such a decision is made (and is reversible) by democratic means.
Hmmmm ... It's probably just an urban myth, but there is the old story of how a consortium of Standard Oil, Bridgestone Tyres and General Motors bought the public rail system of a major city, scrapped the trains, and replaced it with a bus system using General Motors Buses equipped with Bridgestone Tyres and running on Standard Oil. Eventually they realise that they can sell many more vehicles, tyres and fuel, if they get rid of the buses and replace them with ... er traffic jams.
A value which the US, in practically imposing a constitution on the Federal Republic after the war, apparently did not regard as being of greater importance than the prevention of nazi recidivism.
You just don't get out enough. :)
Though I have not read the judgement, I understand that the ruling merely reverses the lower court's misconception that the location of the server placed the matter outside the court's jurisdicition (now that would be ludicrous), it is enought that the message is broadcast to Germans in Germany.
How do they intend to compel the Aussie to go to Germany to stand trial?The usual way would be to issue a request for extradition. However, the double-criminality rule (ie that the crime must exist both in the requesting and the extradting state), which I believe forms part of the law of Australia, would seem to render extradition unlikely. One does not imagine that the offence Tobin (aka Toebin) is being charged with is a crime in Australia. Indeed his is arguably the kind of political communication which is afforded protection by the Australian Constitution.
I doubt, however, whether the German court entertained the slightest concern about how or if Tobin would be brought back to stand trial. It is the more important question, regarding the internet and the jurisdiction of German courts, that is being addressed here.
I guess it goes to show that wacky court rulings are not limited to the US. ?Indeed, "wacky" rulings are not a monopoly of the US courts. I'm sure you'll find though, that such rulings are far more common in the (mis)conceptions of lay commentators, than in any actual justice system.
1. You mean you're in the same century as the 1980's, but not the 1930s or 1960s. Man I know there are all these folks running around thinking they're already in the 21st Century, but what century do you think you're in? :P
2. Look, I'll cite Tuberville v Savage (1669) 86 ER 684 (which happens still to be good law in my jurisdiction), if it'll help me argue my case (though I'll conceed, it won't be of much help in a libel case). "Your caselaw is old" does not strike me as a particlarly convincing legal argument. Maybe you could try citing some newer stuff which shows how these cases have been overturned or modified.
3. To help you on your way: You might want to argue that Philadelhia Newspapers v Hepps 475 US 767 (1986) together with Milkovich v Lorain Journal Co 497 US 1 (1990), by displacing the common law 'fair comment' defence with a constitutional 'defence' of pure opinion (or at least opinion not implying false facts) + public concern, has raised the bar for plaintiffs in defamation actions. Against this (given the argument is about comparative restrictions on speech across national jurisdictions), you would also have to take into account the various modified 'comment' defences in different national jurisdictions. See for instance the exspansive 'comment' defence that arises from the wide meaning the Privy Council gave to 'public interest' and 'information' in reading a New South Wales statute; Austin v Mirror Newspapers [1986] AC 299; re s22 Defamation Act 1974 (NSW).
Further one has to consider other cross-jurisdictional impairments to free speech. In the US, for instance there still survive some species of tort which protect the privacy of individuals. Admitedly the tort of unreasonable publicization of private facts has probably been buried by Florida Star v BFJ 491 US 524 (1989), the tort of false light, on the other hand, would still seem to be afoot. Elsewhere in the common law world such protection of privacy is virtually unknown (see Kaye v Robertson ANOR [1991] FSR 62), though there have been some stirring in New Zealand Courts that such American torts might be developing there (esp. Tucker v New Media Ownership [1986] 2 NZLR 716)
4. I agree with you, the devil is in the detail.
ps. sorry to be such a pratt
If there ever has existed a communist society, it has only been in the form of a 'primitive' tribal society in which no state and no property exists (the definition of communism). I'll take it that you are speaking of authoriatrian state socialist regimes, run by nominally communist parties ...
Of the capitalist societies that exist, all of them have reserved the ownership of most property to private individuals (they almost invariable do excercise that reservation). Again what stops X from taking my Porsche is a system of property law underwritten by the coercive apparatus of the state. The barrel of the gun (of the police) is operative there too. The necessity of a police force and of a prison system, demonstrates that 'human nature' (if there is such a thing) is not such as to accept this particular arrangement of property relations.
Only the initiation of force is coercion.This might be arguable in terms of bodily self-defence, but when you use it with regard to property, you are making the unwarranted and fatal assumption that 'property' is simply something natural, that arises quite unproblematically between individuals (a la Locke) without the application of state force.
Hello? This is the country where you could succeed in a libel action based on the publication of a photograph, merely because a strap hanging from a saddle in the background could be seen hanging between plaintiff's legs Burton v Crowell Publishing. You might be correct that in regard to public figures the bar has been substantially raised by NYT v Sullivan.
The devil is in the detail too, when you consider the court based exceptions to the first amendment (Go back and look at the 'clear and present danger' cases Schenck v. US, Abrams v. US etc), the rather partisan (poltical) nature of free speech becomes apparent. Back then it was anarchists in the US, now its neo-nazis in France ....