Do you believe one business should be able to pass off its goods as those of another, trading on their reputation? For example, do you believe trademarks should not be legally protected?
That is fraud, the lying is fine until the sale is made, the problem is selling one thing and delivering another. Not a speech issue. I do fully support selling products with bogus trademarks if the buyer is informed that the trademarks are bogus.
What about defamation? If someone maliciously circulates false information about a high profile public figure, and the public figure then loses their job and sees their reputation suffer through no fault of their own, do you believe the person who circulated the information is innocent of all wrong-doing?
Interesting choice of words. No they are not "innocent of wrong-doing" but then again, lots and lots of "wrong-doing" is tolerated for the sake of a greater good. You could make the same argument about people like Rush Limbaugh and those who run the DailyKos - they regularly tell lies by omission which is certainly wrong-doing but your own declared interest in criticism of the state would permit that.
Defamation of a public figure by somebody without any public credibility is meaningless and defamation by someone with public credibility loses it in the long run -- for example Dan Rather and the forged discharge (?) papers about Bush.
What about false advice? We have established credentials for those who practice in fields such as medicine and engineering. Should someone who has not earned the usual qualifications be allowed to pretend they have and practise accordingly?
Again pretty much selling one product but delivering another. Not a speech issue. I fully support using such bogus credentials when there is no explicit or implicit reliance on the area of implied specialty -- for example, a friend of mine regularly uses the title "Dr." when he's looking to intimidate someone he thinks has done him wrong because doctors tend to move in the same social circles as lawyers which suggests he's got good legal firepower available to him if he needs it. Whether it helps him or not, its hard to say, but it sure doesn't seem to have hurt him and no one is relying on him for medical advice as a result (unless you count him telling someone to, "go fuck yourself").
Those three examples coincidentally all relate to disseminating false information, as does the classic "yelling fire in a crowded theatre" example, but we could also consider issues like harassment, so the deception part isn't the only problem.
Harassment is not a speech issue, you can harass and even threaten someone without speech or expression - for example, simply following them where ever they go, and parking your car in front of their house for long periods of time. Thus while speech can certainly be used to harass and threaten, it is not a necessary component thus limitations on harassment and threats are not limitations on speech. Similarly the "yelling fire in a crowded theater" is just another form of threat. You should get in the same kind of trouble for dropping an otherwise benign smoke bomb in a crowded theater and saying nothing.
His open, public side, is always related to charity events, social and economic development proyects.
And commuting the sentences of people convicted of insulting him. Apparently he doesn't have any control over prosecution and conviction, but he can essentially pardon them when it is all over.
Well, on that absolute principle, there is nothing wrong with someone making a public offer of a reward for shooting you dead, so "to the death" is perhaps an apt summary.
Anyone stupid enough to expect to get paid based on an anonymous offer and violent enough to shoot someone is probably going to get themselves into trouble on their own anyway. Let us not set the rules of our society based on the pathology of the lowest of the low.
Well gee, the first article is a meaningless single case of credit card fraud, if that's the best they could dig up, then they suck at digging up credit card fraud stories because such are just the nature of the beast when accepting credit cards online and the system already has mechanisms for dealing with it - as in the person who was fraudulently charged calls up and disputes the charge.
The second link to a blog was typical blog bullshit - lots of hysteria about how the website doesn't immediately puke when you enter bogus data but what is glaringly missing is any specific mention of charges actually being processed for valid CC numbers with invalid names and addresses. The fact that no comment is even made about that most important step says to me that the blog owner knows quite well that those charges were never processed and just decided to leave out that fact in order to make his point. Partisanship before truth, so common among the blogs and radio shows that purport to be the news but are really only opinion pieces. The real irony is that these types are the ones ones who constantly complain about how the 'MSM' is misleading.
The third link is actually a fairly good news article, but consequently it doesn't support "Orne's" supposition as it indicates multiple times that both campaigns have had problems and that both campaigns have taken steps to improve compliance with FEC regulations as the problems have presented themselves.
Seems like circletimesquare's summary was pretty accurate - Orne contradicted himself with his own links, no further comment should have been needed as any critical reader would have come to the same conclusion.
I've seen claims that Obama's average donation size is $80 and that he has refused corporate donations. I've heard McCain refused corporate/lobbyist money too, but nothing about donation sizes and sources.
But what I would really like to see, from a place like factcheck.org, is a comprehensive breakdown of funding for both candidates by size, demographic, time frame and 'outside influences' like corps that lean on their employees to donate to a candidate or just a PAC - including the RNC and DNC and any other 3rd party advocacy groups.
Damned good point. How does anyone know that camera-based documentation is any specific voter's experience??
If you are selling your vote, then the standard of proof for the 'buyer' needs to be high to guarantee they got what they needed.
If you are proving there are bugs - deliberate or otherwise - in the voting machines, the standard of proof need only be enough to enable others to reproduce the problem or perhaps correlate with similar recordings made by unrelated parties.
I disagree. I'd say its more like self-interested donations made by companies who directly and indirectly benefit from the end result and students writing code to gain marketable experience.
I don't believe in absolute free speech either -- and neither does any contemporary legal system that I know of
I will ignore the fact that you tried to broaden the scope of the issue from anonymous speech to "absolute free speech" and reference the following SCOTUS ruling to demonstrate why free speech is critical:
"Anonymous pamphlets, leaflets, brochures and even books have played an important role in the progress of mankind." Talley v. California, 362 U.S. 60, 64 (1960). Great works of literature have frequently been produced by authors writing under assumed names. [n.4] Despite readers' curiosity and the public's interest in identifying the creator of a work of art, an author generally is free to decide whether or not to disclose her true identity. The decision in favor of anonymity may be motivated by fear of economic or official retaliation, by concern about social ostracism, or merely by a desire to preserve as much of one's privacy as possible. Whatever the motivation may be, at least in the field of literary endeavor, the interest in having anonymous works enter the marketplace of ideas unquestionably outweighs any public interest in requiring disclosure as a condition of entry. [n.5] Accordingly, an author's decision to remain anonymous, like other decisions concerning omissions or additions to the content of a publication, is an aspect of the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment.
The freedom to publish anonymously extends beyond the literary realm. In Talley, the Court held that the First Amendment protects the distribution of unsigned handbills urging readers to boycott certain Los Angeles merchants who were allegedly engaging in discriminatory employment practices. 362 U.S. 60. Writing for the Court, Justice Black noted that "[p]ersecuted groups and sects from time to time throughout history have been able to criticize oppressive practices and laws either anonymously or not at all." Id., at 64. Justice Black recalled England's abusive press licensing laws and seditious libel prosecutions, and he reminded us that even the arguments favoring the ratification of the Constitution advanced in the Federalist Papers were published under fictitious names. Id., at 64-65. On occasion, quite apart from any threat of persecution, an advocate may believe her ideas will be more persuasive if her readers are unaware of her identity. Anonymity thereby provides a way for a writer who may be personally unpopular to ensure that readers will not prejudge her message simply because they do not like its proponent. Thus, even in the field of political rhetoric, where "the identity of the speaker is an important component of many attempts to persuade," City of Ladue v. Gilleo, 512 U. S. ___, ___ (1994) (slip op., at 13), the most effective advocates have sometimes opted for anonymity. The specific holding in Talley related to advocacy of an economic boycott, but the Court's reasoning embraced a respected tradition of anonymity in the advocacy of political causes. [n.6] This tradition is perhaps best exemplified by the secret ballot, the hard won right to vote one's conscience without fear of retaliation
It is neither desirable nor easily practical to conceal the identity of the accused; in fact, it is desirable and practical for the opposite to happen.
What do you have against people being able to publicly confront their accusers and be confronted in turn?
Now the DMCA applied to hardware makes me scream so it's not perfect but the safe harbor is one thing that they got right.
It would be righter if there were actual penalties for falsely sending a takedown when you don't have the authority to do so (you don't actually own the copyright to the material).
Are you saying you don't have a stick up your butt about the whole thread? Come on, go back and read your own posts, they are pretty funny.
Here's a bone - any cost is too much because there has been no significant lapse in security to justify these changes. Passport forgery has been trivial for decades, yet we have not seen any significant problems in that time and we certainly have not seen any recent increases in problems either.
If I can trust 20% of my income in an online transaction, I should sure as hell be able to vote securely and anonomously.
Mortgage payments are not anonymous. Thus it is very easy to catch when they went wrong and unwind the paper trail. Truly anonymous voting, not so much.
Is it illegal for someone to take a cellphone into the booth and record this happening?
I hope so, because I don't want my boss or union steward to have me take a picture of my ballot so he can check it for mistakes.
That's a poor reason to ban cameras -- for one thing its the boss who is breaking the law by extorting you to vote a certain way, not the camera for being used. For another, there is no way for your boss to verify that the ballot you took a picture of is the one you actually voted with because you can always get a new paper ballot and if you are taking a picture of the computer screen, you can always go back and change it too.
What's with this hypothetical language ("would" and "if")? It's already happened -- hanging chads are caused by bad UI too!
Hanging chads are not a failure of user interface. They are a failure of the tallying system. You only get a hanging chad when you've punched a hole in the paper and the puncher doesn't quite completely cut the entire hole out - leaving a 'hinge' between the edge of the hole and paper from the center of the hole. When there is only one 'hanging chad' it ought to be quite clear what the voter's intent was because, after all, they did punch a hole completely through the paper.
I have no problem with a higher tax rate kicking in above $250K/yr of my income, as long as the money is spent properly (i.e. NOT on bailouts, wars, etc).
Furthermore, it is a marginal tax increase. That means it doesn't apply to any of the $250K that you took as income in order to get to the $250K point. At roughly 3% it really is quite minor in absolute dollars for anything under $300K or so - roughly $1,500 extra taxes on $300K than now.
Either 1984 has become so diffuse that all it means is badness+database, or the summary is badly confused. 1984 was all about a scenario where the state had ubiquitous control(with force of law) over information, which was used against everybody all the time.
Slashdot Mirror
Good thing there wasn't another attempt, otherwise the counter would've overflowed.
WORD.
OCTET.
Do you believe one business should be able to pass off its goods as those of another, trading on their reputation? For example, do you believe trademarks should not be legally protected?
That is fraud, the lying is fine until the sale is made, the problem is selling one thing and delivering another. Not a speech issue. I do fully support selling products with bogus trademarks if the buyer is informed that the trademarks are bogus.
What about defamation? If someone maliciously circulates false information about a high profile public figure, and the public figure then loses their job and sees their reputation suffer through no fault of their own, do you believe the person who circulated the information is innocent of all wrong-doing?
Interesting choice of words. No they are not "innocent of wrong-doing" but then again, lots and lots of "wrong-doing" is tolerated for the sake of a greater good. You could make the same argument about people like Rush Limbaugh and those who run the DailyKos - they regularly tell lies by omission which is certainly wrong-doing but your own declared interest in criticism of the state would permit that.
Defamation of a public figure by somebody without any public credibility is meaningless and defamation by someone with public credibility loses it in the long run -- for example Dan Rather and the forged discharge (?) papers about Bush.
What about false advice? We have established credentials for those who practice in fields such as medicine and engineering. Should someone who has not earned the usual qualifications be allowed to pretend they have and practise accordingly?
Again pretty much selling one product but delivering another. Not a speech issue. I fully support using such bogus credentials when there is no explicit or implicit reliance on the area of implied specialty -- for example, a friend of mine regularly uses the title "Dr." when he's looking to intimidate someone he thinks has done him wrong because doctors tend to move in the same social circles as lawyers which suggests he's got good legal firepower available to him if he needs it. Whether it helps him or not, its hard to say, but it sure doesn't seem to have hurt him and no one is relying on him for medical advice as a result (unless you count him telling someone to, "go fuck yourself").
Those three examples coincidentally all relate to disseminating false information, as does the classic "yelling fire in a crowded theatre" example, but we could also consider issues like harassment, so the deception part isn't the only problem.
Harassment is not a speech issue, you can harass and even threaten someone without speech or expression - for example, simply following them where ever they go, and parking your car in front of their house for long periods of time. Thus while speech can certainly be used to harass and threaten, it is not a necessary component thus limitations on harassment and threats are not limitations on speech. Similarly the "yelling fire in a crowded theater" is just another form of threat. You should get in the same kind of trouble for dropping an otherwise benign smoke bomb in a crowded theater and saying nothing.
I agree, its bullshit you got modded troll. You pretty much said what I said, just in a direct fashion and I got +5 for it.
His open, public side, is always related to charity events, social and economic development proyects.
And commuting the sentences of people convicted of insulting him.
Apparently he doesn't have any control over prosecution and conviction, but he can essentially pardon them when it is all over.
Well, on that absolute principle, there is nothing wrong with someone making a public offer of a reward for shooting you dead, so "to the death" is perhaps an apt summary.
Anyone stupid enough to expect to get paid based on an anonymous offer and violent enough to shoot someone is probably going to get themselves into trouble on their own anyway. Let us not set the rules of our society based on the pathology of the lowest of the low.
Well gee, the first article is a meaningless single case of credit card fraud, if that's the best they could dig up, then they suck at digging up credit card fraud stories because such are just the nature of the beast when accepting credit cards online and the system already has mechanisms for dealing with it - as in the person who was fraudulently charged calls up and disputes the charge.
The second link to a blog was typical blog bullshit - lots of hysteria about how the website doesn't immediately puke when you enter bogus data but what is glaringly missing is any specific mention of charges actually being processed for valid CC numbers with invalid names and addresses. The fact that no comment is even made about that most important step says to me that the blog owner knows quite well that those charges were never processed and just decided to leave out that fact in order to make his point. Partisanship before truth, so common among the blogs and radio shows that purport to be the news but are really only opinion pieces. The real irony is that these types are the ones ones who constantly complain about how the 'MSM' is misleading.
The third link is actually a fairly good news article, but consequently it doesn't support "Orne's" supposition as it indicates multiple times that both campaigns have had problems and that both campaigns have taken steps to improve compliance with FEC regulations as the problems have presented themselves.
Seems like circletimesquare's summary was pretty accurate - Orne contradicted himself with his own links, no further comment should have been needed as any critical reader would have come to the same conclusion.
I've seen claims that Obama's average donation size is $80 and that he has refused corporate donations. I've heard McCain refused corporate/lobbyist money too, but nothing about donation sizes and sources.
But what I would really like to see, from a place like factcheck.org, is a comprehensive breakdown of funding for both candidates by size, demographic, time frame and 'outside influences' like corps that lean on their employees to donate to a candidate or just a PAC - including the RNC and DNC and any other 3rd party advocacy groups.
Damned good point. How does anyone know that camera-based documentation is any specific voter's experience??
If you are selling your vote, then the standard of proof for the 'buyer' needs to be high to guarantee they got what they needed.
If you are proving there are bugs - deliberate or otherwise - in the voting machines, the standard of proof need only be enough to enable others to reproduce the problem or perhaps correlate with similar recordings made by unrelated parties.
I disagree. I'd say its more like self-interested donations made by companies who directly and indirectly benefit from the end result and students writing code to gain marketable experience.
I don't believe in absolute free speech either -- and neither does any contemporary legal system that I know of
I will ignore the fact that you tried to broaden the scope of the issue from anonymous speech to "absolute free speech" and reference the following SCOTUS ruling to demonstrate why free speech is critical:
"Anonymous pamphlets, leaflets, brochures and even books have played an important role in the progress of mankind." Talley v. California, 362 U.S. 60, 64 (1960). Great works of literature have frequently been produced by authors writing under assumed names. [n.4] Despite readers' curiosity and the public's interest in identifying the creator of a work of art, an author generally is free to decide whether or not to disclose her true identity. The decision in favor of anonymity may be motivated by fear of economic or official retaliation, by concern about social ostracism, or merely by a desire to preserve as much of one's privacy as possible. Whatever the motivation may be, at least in the field of literary endeavor, the interest in having anonymous works enter the marketplace of ideas unquestionably outweighs any public interest in requiring disclosure as a condition of entry. [n.5] Accordingly, an author's decision to remain anonymous, like other decisions concerning omissions or additions to the content of a publication, is an aspect of the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment.
The freedom to publish anonymously extends beyond the literary realm. In Talley, the Court held that the First Amendment protects the distribution of unsigned handbills urging readers to boycott certain Los Angeles merchants who were allegedly engaging in discriminatory employment practices. 362 U.S. 60. Writing for the Court, Justice Black noted that "[p]ersecuted groups and sects from time to time throughout history have been able to criticize oppressive practices and laws either anonymously or not at all." Id., at 64. Justice Black recalled England's abusive press licensing laws and seditious libel prosecutions, and he reminded us that even the arguments favoring the ratification of the Constitution advanced in the Federalist Papers were published under fictitious names. Id., at 64-65. On occasion, quite apart from any threat of persecution, an advocate may believe her ideas will be more persuasive if her readers are unaware of her identity. Anonymity thereby provides a way for a writer who may be personally unpopular to ensure that readers will not prejudge her message simply because they do not like its proponent. Thus, even in the field of political rhetoric, where "the identity of the speaker is an important component of many attempts to persuade," City of Ladue v. Gilleo, 512 U. S. ___, ___ (1994) (slip op., at 13), the most effective advocates have sometimes opted for anonymity. The specific holding in Talley related to advocacy of an economic boycott, but the Court's reasoning embraced a respected tradition of anonymity in the advocacy of political causes. [n.6] This tradition is perhaps best exemplified by the secret ballot, the hard won right to vote one's conscience without fear of retaliation
McIntyre v Ohio Elections Commission
It is neither desirable nor easily practical to conceal the identity of the accused; in fact, it is desirable and practical for the opposite to happen.
What do you have against people being able to publicly confront their accusers and be confronted in turn?
What do you have against anonymous speech?
Bingo! If you weren't replying to my thread, I would mod you up.
Now the DMCA applied to hardware makes me scream so it's not perfect but the safe harbor is one thing that they got right.
It would be righter if there were actual penalties for falsely sending a takedown when you don't have the authority to do so (you don't actually own the copyright to the material).
Are you saying you don't have a stick up your butt about the whole thread? Come on, go back and read your own posts, they are pretty funny.
Here's a bone - any cost is too much because there has been no significant lapse in security to justify these changes. Passport forgery has been trivial for decades, yet we have not seen any significant problems in that time and we certainly have not seen any recent increases in problems either.
You responded to my post about how the security does work, and pointed out that it's imperfect. This was your entry into the thread.
That was your post?
Sorry, I misremembered.
No wonder you have such stick up your butt about it.
You did not go far enough back in the thread. You responded to ME, not the other way around.
If I can trust 20% of my income in an online transaction, I should sure as hell be able to vote securely and anonomously.
Mortgage payments are not anonymous. Thus it is very easy to catch when they went wrong and unwind the paper trail. Truly anonymous voting, not so much.
Is it illegal for someone to take a cellphone into the booth and record this happening?
I hope so, because I don't want my boss or union steward to have me take a picture of my ballot so he can check it for mistakes.
That's a poor reason to ban cameras -- for one thing its the boss who is breaking the law by extorting you to vote a certain way, not the camera for being used. For another, there is no way for your boss to verify that the ballot you took a picture of is the one you actually voted with because you can always get a new paper ballot and if you are taking a picture of the computer screen, you can always go back and change it too.
What's with this hypothetical language ("would" and "if")? It's already happened -- hanging chads are caused by bad UI too!
Hanging chads are not a failure of user interface. They are a failure of the tallying system. You only get a hanging chad when you've punched a hole in the paper and the puncher doesn't quite completely cut the entire hole out - leaving a 'hinge' between the edge of the hole and paper from the center of the hole. When there is only one 'hanging chad' it ought to be quite clear what the voter's intent was because, after all, they did punch a hole completely through the paper.
I have no problem with a higher tax rate kicking in above $250K/yr of my income, as long as the money is spent properly (i.e. NOT on bailouts, wars, etc).
Furthermore, it is a marginal tax increase. That means it doesn't apply to any of the $250K that you took as income in order to get to the $250K point. At roughly 3% it really is quite minor in absolute dollars for anything under $300K or so - roughly $1,500 extra taxes on $300K than now.
Either 1984 has become so diffuse that all it means is badness+database, or the summary is badly confused. 1984 was all about a scenario where the state had ubiquitous control(with force of law) over information, which was used against everybody all the time.
OK. Welcome to 1983.
In that case, why did you bring it up?
Because you misinterpreted my post.
That only works when the machines are (relatively) homogenous.
So, are you saying that microsoft loves the sin, but hates the sinner?
So, it seems like you are saying a lot about the brown, one might even say you are making noise about it, perhaps a brown noise?
No, I just don't really feel like having this conversation, because I've had it a million times before.