I have no particular problem with the concept of copyright, but the problem I see with DRM is that it allows the content distributors to essentially rewrite the "copyright bargain" however they see fit.
Not only do they not have to release the work to the public domain after the copyright expires but they can also add on other arbitrary restrictions that have no basis in copyright law at all.
There is nothing stopping them from say making the DRM only let me playback the file on an "approved device" or have it prevent me from playing it back on the second Tuesday of the month. There is nothing in copyright law that gives them the right to do this.
That being said, I don't (yet) see the need to outlaw DRM. So far my policy on draconian DRM restrictions is to just not buy the offending media, and that seems to be working ok for me so far. In fact if it weren't for the RIAA/MPAA/Microsoft monopolies I think market forces would pretty effectively keep DRM restrictions from becoming overly burdensome. But to answer the GP's original question I can totally see how someone could be ok with copyrights and not cool with DRM because DRM allows you to do much more than just enforce your copyright.
You're right. I'm sorry, I don't know what came over me. I will immediately report to the nearest Walmart(TM) customer service center for "re-education".
"Now they're just another group of monopolist bullies."
Oh yes the poor Belgium newspapers are being picked on by big bad Google.
What a load of rubbish.
These guys just finished suing Google for listing their sites on Google news. Who's to say that next week they won't decide to sue Google for including them in their regular search indexes? After all Google's search results include a snippet of the page they link to just like their news site did. How is that any more legal?
Better for Google to just yank all links to these clowns. It's just not worth the risk of getting dragged into court again.
I don't have a lot of sympathy for the newspapers in this case. By suing they pretty much asked Google to remove their links. The old adage about being careful what you wish for would seem to apply.
"if the ads on the news sites also appear in the cached material, then it is hard to see what loss there is to the news sites"
I think it all depends on your business model. If you're only getting paid for click-throughs then you might be right.
If, on the other hand, you're getting paid per ad view then a Google cache of the add could hurt your bottom line because you have no way of quantifying how many people saw the ad via the Google cache.
What sounds better to a potential advertiser?
"Last month we got twenty million hits for the page that had your ad on it."
OR
"Last month we got ten million hits for the page with your ad, but we kind of sort of think that ten million more might have viewed the cached version Google was keeping."
This of course also ignores the potential revenue a newspaper might be able to realize by selling some sort of subscription service to be able to access the archive of old editions, as some posters above have suggested might be the case here.
I think the whole business about permissioning is a red herring. They have no real interest in actually getting themselves delisted from search engines. That would destroy their business as no one would be able to find their precious copyrighted articles.
If all they wanted was to not be indexed they would have just used robots.txt and been done with it. Rather this smells to me like a cheap attempt to squeeze some money out of Google.
They want to be listed in Google because it gets them traffic. But wouldn't it be great if they could also get in on the profits Google is making by providing that listing service? From the news paper's perspective that's a win-win scenario.
"I don't want to do extra work because someone is misusing my copyright, I want them to abide by the copyright in the first place."
IANAL so perhaps you can enlighten me as to what exactly Google is doing that is in violation of copyright law.
If you post an article in a public place there's nothing I know of in copyright law that prevents anyone from walking by, reading the article, and telling other people what the article was about and how to find it.
The worst thing Google is doing is listing a small excerpt from the article on their page, but isn't that covered by fair use?
You say that you don't want to have to do extra work to opt out; well I look at the argument the other way around. You've posted something on the public Internet. The way the Internet works it's assumed that other people can link to and quote anything you put up. If there's nothing in law that prevents this why should Google have to go around to every single content provider and check with them to see if they want there stuff linked or not? The world may not work for Google, but neither does Google work for the world.
I'm sorry but what is it we're all supposed to believe in and support?
I guess my pod must have been defective because I thought people were still allowed to think for themselves.
When did slashdot become a hive mind? Did I miss a meeting?
I imagine he was referring to King's Quest and Space Quest. Say what you will about the adventure game genera (I personally loved them and wish people made more of them these days) but I think you'd be hard pressed to argue that these weren't classics.
Hmm...obviously I'm not making myself sufficiently clear. Let me try again.
In this comment Mr. Anonymous Coward says (allow me to paraphrase)
"Boy this case sets a good precedent for me, since I'm currently being prosecuted for downloading songs I've never even heard of, probably because I was running an open wifi network."
"Allowing other people who you don't even know to use your internet connection is just plain dumb."
Clearly in response to the AC's running of an open wifi network.
Then you come along in this post and say (me paraphrasing again)
"Boy everyone besides me sure is dumb. TFA says it was the woman's child who downloaded the stuff not someone she didn't know."
But pete6677 wasn't talking about the case in the article!! He was replying to the AC telling him he was an idiot for running an open wireless network. And he was right that is a pretty stupid thing to do if you're looking to avoid legal prosecution.
I hope that clears things up for you. Let me know if you need me to draw you a diagram.
"Get your facts straight before you jump the gun, you won't seem so foolish next time"
Ummm...ok, before you go ripping in to him and the people who modded his post maybe you should take a second to, you know, read the post that he was replying to!
Here let me help you
"I'm currently being prosecuted for downloading songs that I've never even heard of, probably because I was running an open wifi network"
Question: if you're willing to let all your other rights get stripped away, what is it you're planning to use that gun to protect?
I thought the whole point of the second amendment was so that "the people" could violently oppose any government that tried to steal their other rights.
"Unfortunately, this is a problem. The public should NOT be given the right to vote. Governance is an actual skill, and voting is part of that. Governance does not come naturally. Voting should be a PRIVELEDGE, and NOT a right. Like drivers licenses. You should be qualified about the issues you are voting for before you are allowed to vote one it."
So when I'm voting for an office, which issues am I required to be qualified on, and who gets to decide what constitutes "qualified"? Those are some pretty subjective terms you're throwing around there.
"To illustrate, consider that a dumb retard in Alabama is gonna vote for a president about issues like economics and diplomacy. Now, how is that retard supposed to be any more qualified in economics than a PhD economics professor in Chicago? Why SHOULD that alabama retard be given ANY influence over society? Just because he's alive? Being alive does NOT qualify you influence over other people. Heck, most people don't even have the capability to control their OWN lives."
Because the "dumb retard" is part of society. The economic policies instituted by the government effect him just as much as your hypothetical PhD economics professor. My "just being alive" might not be a good reason for me to have influence over your life, but I'm not convinced that your having a PhD is a particularly good reason for you to have influence over me. If the only people allowed to vote on economic matters were economists then I fear we'd start seeing economic policy that disproportionately favored economists to the detriment of everyone else. Unless you believe that just because someone is smart that it's impossible for them to be greedy and self serving.
"The failure in a voting public is apparent here. You people have been bred to believe that voting is somehow 'good'. Unfortunately, it results in the most average of political leadership: the candidate with the most mass appeal will win. And, mass appeal doesn't mean success. The public is going to vote for the guy with the prettiest hair, or is "like them", which has nothing to do with how sound their economic policies are. Policy and pretty hair have nothing to do with each other, no matter how hard conservatives try to their correlation.
Democracy is no better than any other system. It GUARANTEES that your leaders are, at best, average. At least with a monarchy or dictatorship, it's possible to come up with a leader that's above average."
I don't agree that democracy necessarily guarantees average leaders. Democracy doesn't elect average people, it elects those who appeal to average people. Just because someone is average doesn't mean they're incapable of recognizing when someone else is above average. And people don't necessarily vote for people that are "like them" they vote for people who are like the way they perceive themselves to be. We all have a tendency to perhaps think of ourselves as better than we actually are.
"Democracy is a horrible idea. In addition, representative democracy is a horrible idea. In our system, we elect a representative on issues like economics and diplomacy. Why are we defining ONE reprsentative to handle EVERY issue? Does a PhD in economics automatically qualify you as an expert diplomat? Does the fact that you own a pest-removal company or run a baseball team mean you're going to also make the best decisions about free-trade or human rights? Of course not."
You don't elect an individual representative for every little issue because if you did you would do nothing but vote all day everyday. So instead you elect general leaders who pick domain experts to deal with each individual issue. But even if you could manage to cut out the middle man and elect the domain experts directly you would still need some "generalist" politicians to sort it all out. The problem with an expert for every issue is that the individual issues don't live in isolation. They're all interconnected. What happens when the e
"Answer me that question once you go to a drugstore...pain relief isle, but B4Y3R aspirin, that looks just like BAYER aspirin minus the chemicals that relieve pain"
Yes and if BistBuy.com was a phishing site setup to look just like the real Best Buy site in the hopes of stealing your credit card number then this might be a valid analogy.
But that's not what this article is about. This is talking about giving you a page full of Google adds for other companies completely unrelated to Best Buy. This would be more akin to looking up "bist buy" in the phone book and finding an ad for "Crazy Charlie's discount electronics store".
Your pharmacy scenario is a problem because someone is trying to pass off an illegitimate product as an actual one by creating brand name confusion. But no one but a complete idiot is going to mistake a page full of Google adds for the Best Buy website so there is no confusion at all. People will just go "oh this isn't the site I wanted", correct the type-o and move on with life.
Is it annoying? Maybe. You had to look at a page full of ads you didn't actually want to see. But really it's your own fault for typing in the wrong address.
I echo the sentiments of the grandparent poster; who is this actually hurting?
"Why is it that common sense and reality go out the window when a computer is involved"
"Western nations need to remember that free expression does not cause harm."
Rubbish.
You're telling me that if you're an elementary school teacher, and I circulate a flyer to the parents of every child in your school saying that you're a convicted child molester, that you won't be harmed by that? They're just words after all. They can't hurt you.
Pretty much every nation puts some limits on false and/or malicious speech. You can argue about where you want to draw the line, but to say that no one was every harmed by the speech of another is just absurd.
To put it another way, "your right to swing your fist ends at my nose".
"I hate it when people replace the word "morals" with "ethics", thinking that they're both synonymous. Learn the difference."
Hmm...ok I'm no english major but
ethics: 1. A set of principles of right conduct. 2. The study of the general nature of morals and of the specific moral choices to be made by a person; moral philosophy
morals: 1. Of or concerned with the judgment of the goodness or badness of human action and character. 2. Teaching or exhibiting goodness or correctness of character and behavior
So for us stupid people in the audience could you perhaps enlighten us as to what distinction you're making, because to me both morals and ethics seem to be equally acceptable in this context.
I think that you might be trying to argue against a point that the GP post wasn't actually making. The GGP post said (and the GP post highlighted) that
"There is no such thing as 'judicial estoppel'"
jasomill correctly pointed out that judicial estoppel is in fact a real legal term (at least according to the authors of Black's Law Dictionary, Seventh Edition). Whether or not judicial estoppel actually applies to this case is outside the scope of his post.
"How about recognizing a moral difference between legitimate, sovereign states and pseudo-states run by dictators and tyrants?"
There are two problems with this that I can see:
1) Who gets to decide which are "legitimate, sovereign states" and which aren't? Me? You? What happens if we disagree? Sure some cases will be really clear, but what about the grey area in between? Take Saudia Arabia for example. Close US ally, but last I checked not exactly a bastion of democratic freedom. Do they get to come to the UN? What about China? Is that a dictatorship or do the people there genuinely like communism? What about the Britain? They're still ostensibly a monarchy, but I would hardly call them a "pseudo-state run by dictators and tyrants". As is usually the case in the real world, these distinctions are not nearly as black and white as we'd like them to be.
2) The whole premise of the UN originally was to give countries an open forum to work out their problems (or as you put it a "diplomatic sewing circle [where] the diplomats of the world [could] sit around and talk things over") so that we could avoid international disputes like the first and second world wars. If there's anyone that the world's liberal democracies are going to disagree with it's probably going to be "oppressive police states". Thus even if we could somehow agree on which countries are legitimate states and which aren't, excluding all those that aren't from the UN would be somewhat counter productive. It'd be like holding a public debate but only inviting people who already agree with you.
As for the UN not being democratic enough...
"Its 'legislative branch,' for lack of a better term, is made up of unelected ministers and ambassadors"
Actually, if you're referring to the UN general assembly here, it's made up of whatever representatives the member countries choose to send. If you think you're representative to the UN should be an elected official not an appointed ambassador then that's something you have to take up with your own government. That has nothing to do with the UN. Unless you're suggesting that you should also have a say on how other countries select their UN representatives. But that would be like someone from New York saying they should get to vote in the Texas Senate race. It makes no sense from a country sovereignty point of view.
"What happens if I get pissed off at the guy who's in charge of (for example) the ITU"
What happens now if you get pissed off at the guy who's in charge of (for example) the CIA? Sure you could write to your Congressman but he'd be unlikely to be able to do anything about it. Any sufficiently large bureaucracy must eventually resort to appointed officials in order to get things done. Otherwise we'd do nothing but vote on proposals all day long. If you really don't approve of a UN initiative you should pressure you're elected officials to either:
a) work in the UN to get it changed or, failing that,
b) ignore the UN recommendation. After all the UN has no binding authority over its member nations. If your country doesn't like what the UN is doing then don't go along with it. The US, after all, was able to unilaterally invade Iraq, no matter what the UN had to say about it. When it comes to the internet, where cooperation between nations is crucial, this type of lone wolf behavior could make interaction with other nations difficult or impossible. But if, as a nation, America doesn't like the UN ruling that may be a price you're willing to pay.
"The minute we started giving the UN actual authority...the body became little more than a benevolent, impotent tyranny."
I think this is just devolving into hyperbole now. But benevolent tyranny? Isn't that an oxymoron?
"Doesn't he lack "standing" (a legal term with a legal definition) to sue?
I think that's really what this whole thing is about. He wants to shut down people selling MAME boxes with illegal ROMs because they're undercutting his business. However he can't sue them for selling MAME (which may or may not be in violation of MAME's licensing) because he has nothing to do with MAME or its development. Only the MAME developers could launch such a suit. Similarly he can't sue his competitors for illegally distributing ROMs because he doesn't own the copyrights on those ROMs. At best he might happen to have a license to redistribute them. It would be up to whoever owns the copyrights on those old games to go after the ROM distributors. However there is very little profit motivation for anyone to do so because:
a) these are old games that aren't exactly pulling in lots of revenue right now, and
b) even if you did sue, most ROM distributors are fly by night operations. Even if they did show up to court you'd be lucky if the amount of money you'd get out of them would cover your legal bill.
So if he can't sue them for distributing MAME and he can't sue them for distributing ROMs what can he do? Nothing! However if he could manage to slide a trade mark on the MAME name under the RADAR and actually get it, he could then sue his MAME using competitors for using "his" trademarked name without permission. This would give him sufficient standing in court to purse a civil case for trademark violation. Since most ROM distributors are fly by night operations who wouldn't even bother to show up to court all he needs to be able to shut them down is to be able to sue them over something, anything, and he can put them out of business.
Slashdot Mirror
I whole-heartedly agree.
I have no particular problem with the concept of copyright, but the problem I see with DRM is that it allows the content distributors to essentially rewrite the "copyright bargain" however they see fit.
Not only do they not have to release the work to the public domain after the copyright expires but they can also add on other arbitrary restrictions that have no basis in copyright law at all. There is nothing stopping them from say making the DRM only let me playback the file on an "approved device" or have it prevent me from playing it back on the second Tuesday of the month. There is nothing in copyright law that gives them the right to do this.
That being said, I don't (yet) see the need to outlaw DRM. So far my policy on draconian DRM restrictions is to just not buy the offending media, and that seems to be working ok for me so far. In fact if it weren't for the RIAA/MPAA/Microsoft monopolies I think market forces would pretty effectively keep DRM restrictions from becoming overly burdensome. But to answer the GP's original question I can totally see how someone could be ok with copyrights and not cool with DRM because DRM allows you to do much more than just enforce your copyright.
"What are you, a communist or something?"
You're right. I'm sorry, I don't know what came over me. I will immediately report to the nearest Walmart(TM) customer service center for "re-education".
"Now they're just another group of monopolist bullies."
Oh yes the poor Belgium newspapers are being picked on by big bad Google.
What a load of rubbish.
These guys just finished suing Google for listing their sites on Google news. Who's to say that next week they won't decide to sue Google for including them in their regular search indexes? After all Google's search results include a snippet of the page they link to just like their news site did. How is that any more legal?
Better for Google to just yank all links to these clowns. It's just not worth the risk of getting dragged into court again.
I don't have a lot of sympathy for the newspapers in this case. By suing they pretty much asked Google to remove their links. The old adage about being careful what you wish for would seem to apply.
"if the ads on the news sites also appear in the cached material, then it is hard to see what loss there is to the news sites"
I think it all depends on your business model. If you're only getting paid for click-throughs then you might be right.
If, on the other hand, you're getting paid per ad view then a Google cache of the add could hurt your bottom line because you have no way of quantifying how many people saw the ad via the Google cache.
What sounds better to a potential advertiser?
"Last month we got twenty million hits for the page that had your ad on it."
OR
"Last month we got ten million hits for the page with your ad, but we kind of sort of think that ten million more might have viewed the cached version Google was keeping."
This of course also ignores the potential revenue a newspaper might be able to realize by selling some sort of subscription service to be able to access the archive of old editions, as some posters above have suggested might be the case here.
I think the whole business about permissioning is a red herring. They have no real interest in actually getting themselves delisted from search engines. That would destroy their business as no one would be able to find their precious copyrighted articles.
If all they wanted was to not be indexed they would have just used robots.txt and been done with it. Rather this smells to me like a cheap attempt to squeeze some money out of Google.
They want to be listed in Google because it gets them traffic. But wouldn't it be great if they could also get in on the profits Google is making by providing that listing service? From the news paper's perspective that's a win-win scenario.
"I don't want to do extra work because someone is misusing my copyright, I want them to abide by the copyright in the first place."
IANAL so perhaps you can enlighten me as to what exactly Google is doing that is in violation of copyright law.
If you post an article in a public place there's nothing I know of in copyright law that prevents anyone from walking by, reading the article, and telling other people what the article was about and how to find it.
The worst thing Google is doing is listing a small excerpt from the article on their page, but isn't that covered by fair use?
You say that you don't want to have to do extra work to opt out; well I look at the argument the other way around. You've posted something on the public Internet. The way the Internet works it's assumed that other people can link to and quote anything you put up. If there's nothing in law that prevents this why should Google have to go around to every single content provider and check with them to see if they want there stuff linked or not? The world may not work for Google, but neither does Google work for the world.
"Schneier's piece is not an article. It's an editorial"
Well if I may be pedantic for a moment
Editorial: of or relating to an article stating opinions or giving perspectives
I'm sorry but what is it we're all supposed to believe in and support?
I guess my pod must have been defective because I thought people were still allowed to think for themselves.
When did slashdot become a hive mind? Did I miss a meeting?
I imagine he was referring to King's Quest and Space Quest. Say what you will about the adventure game genera (I personally loved them and wish people made more of them these days) but I think you'd be hard pressed to argue that these weren't classics.
Hmm...obviously I'm not making myself sufficiently clear. Let me try again.
In this comment Mr. Anonymous Coward says (allow me to paraphrase)
"Boy this case sets a good precedent for me, since I'm currently being prosecuted for downloading songs I've never even heard of, probably because I was running an open wifi network."
Then in this comment pete6677 said
"Allowing other people who you don't even know to use your internet connection is just plain dumb."
Clearly in response to the AC's running of an open wifi network.
Then you come along in this post and say (me paraphrasing again)
"Boy everyone besides me sure is dumb. TFA says it was the woman's child who downloaded the stuff not someone she didn't know."
But pete6677 wasn't talking about the case in the article!! He was replying to the AC telling him he was an idiot for running an open wireless network. And he was right that is a pretty stupid thing to do if you're looking to avoid legal prosecution.
I hope that clears things up for you. Let me know if you need me to draw you a diagram.
"Get your facts straight before you jump the gun, you won't seem so foolish next time"
What you said.
Ummm...ok, before you go ripping in to him and the people who modded his post maybe you should take a second to, you know, read the post that he was replying to!
Here let me help you
"I'm currently being prosecuted for downloading songs that I've never even heard of, probably because I was running an open wifi network "
That make it any clearer for you?
"Sheesh- f*sking idiots"
Talk about the pot and the f*sking kettle.
"if you fully understand exactly what your application is doing at every point, and do not rely on someone else's code (read libraries or classes)..."
you'll drop dead before you ever finish writing it.
Comic Book Guy: "Oh a sarcasm detector...that's a REAL useful invention!"
*** Sarcasm beeps wildly and detector explodes ****
Ok so perhaps in this case a sarcasm detector would have been useful.
Question: if you're willing to let all your other rights get stripped away, what is it you're planning to use that gun to protect?
I thought the whole point of the second amendment was so that "the people" could violently oppose any government that tried to steal their other rights.
"Unfortunately, this is a problem. The public should NOT be given the right to vote. Governance is an actual skill, and voting is part of that. Governance does not come naturally. Voting should be a PRIVELEDGE, and NOT a right. Like drivers licenses. You should be qualified about the issues you are voting for before you are allowed to vote one it."
So when I'm voting for an office, which issues am I required to be qualified on, and who gets to decide what constitutes "qualified"? Those are some pretty subjective terms you're throwing around there.
"To illustrate, consider that a dumb retard in Alabama is gonna vote for a president about issues like economics and diplomacy. Now, how is that retard supposed to be any more qualified in economics than a PhD economics professor in Chicago? Why SHOULD that alabama retard be given ANY influence over society? Just because he's alive? Being alive does NOT qualify you influence over other people. Heck, most people don't even have the capability to control their OWN lives."
Because the "dumb retard" is part of society. The economic policies instituted by the government effect him just as much as your hypothetical PhD economics professor. My "just being alive" might not be a good reason for me to have influence over your life, but I'm not convinced that your having a PhD is a particularly good reason for you to have influence over me. If the only people allowed to vote on economic matters were economists then I fear we'd start seeing economic policy that disproportionately favored economists to the detriment of everyone else. Unless you believe that just because someone is smart that it's impossible for them to be greedy and self serving.
"The failure in a voting public is apparent here. You people have been bred to believe that voting is somehow 'good'. Unfortunately, it results in the most average of political leadership: the candidate with the most mass appeal will win. And, mass appeal doesn't mean success. The public is going to vote for the guy with the prettiest hair, or is "like them", which has nothing to do with how sound their economic policies are. Policy and pretty hair have nothing to do with each other, no matter how hard conservatives try to their correlation.
Democracy is no better than any other system. It GUARANTEES that your leaders are, at best, average. At least with a monarchy or dictatorship, it's possible to come up with a leader that's above average."
I don't agree that democracy necessarily guarantees average leaders. Democracy doesn't elect average people, it elects those who appeal to average people. Just because someone is average doesn't mean they're incapable of recognizing when someone else is above average. And people don't necessarily vote for people that are "like them" they vote for people who are like the way they perceive themselves to be. We all have a tendency to perhaps think of ourselves as better than we actually are.
"Democracy is a horrible idea. In addition, representative democracy is a horrible idea. In our system, we elect a representative on issues like economics and diplomacy. Why are we defining ONE reprsentative to handle EVERY issue? Does a PhD in economics automatically qualify you as an expert diplomat? Does the fact that you own a pest-removal company or run a baseball team mean you're going to also make the best decisions about free-trade or human rights? Of course not."
You don't elect an individual representative for every little issue because if you did you would do nothing but vote all day everyday. So instead you elect general leaders who pick domain experts to deal with each individual issue. But even if you could manage to cut out the middle man and elect the domain experts directly you would still need some "generalist" politicians to sort it all out. The problem with an expert for every issue is that the individual issues don't live in isolation. They're all interconnected. What happens when the e
"Answer me that question once you go to a drugstore...pain relief isle, but B4Y3R aspirin, that looks just like BAYER aspirin minus the chemicals that relieve pain"
Yes and if BistBuy.com was a phishing site setup to look just like the real Best Buy site in the hopes of stealing your credit card number then this might be a valid analogy.
But that's not what this article is about. This is talking about giving you a page full of Google adds for other companies completely unrelated to Best Buy. This would be more akin to looking up "bist buy" in the phone book and finding an ad for "Crazy Charlie's discount electronics store".
Your pharmacy scenario is a problem because someone is trying to pass off an illegitimate product as an actual one by creating brand name confusion. But no one but a complete idiot is going to mistake a page full of Google adds for the Best Buy website so there is no confusion at all. People will just go "oh this isn't the site I wanted", correct the type-o and move on with life. Is it annoying? Maybe. You had to look at a page full of ads you didn't actually want to see. But really it's your own fault for typing in the wrong address.
I echo the sentiments of the grandparent poster; who is this actually hurting?
"Why is it that common sense and reality go out the window when a computer is involved"
Indeed.
Democracy: Four wolves and a lamb voting on lunch.
"Our ignorance of history makes us libel our own times. People have always been like this." -- Gustave Flaubert
"Western nations need to remember that free expression does not cause harm."
Rubbish.
You're telling me that if you're an elementary school teacher, and I circulate a flyer to the parents of every child in your school saying that you're a convicted child molester, that you won't be harmed by that? They're just words after all. They can't hurt you.
Pretty much every nation puts some limits on false and/or malicious speech. You can argue about where you want to draw the line, but to say that no one was every harmed by the speech of another is just absurd.
To put it another way, "your right to swing your fist ends at my nose".
That's brilliant!
If only Bush were running for president again he could make it his new campaign slogan.
I can see the ads now:
"Vote George W. Bush; 'cause hey, he's no more corrupt than Clinton was."
"I hate it when people replace the word "morals" with "ethics", thinking that they're both synonymous. Learn the difference."
Hmm...ok I'm no english major but
ethics: 1. A set of principles of right conduct. 2. The study of the general nature of morals and of the specific moral choices to be made by a person; moral philosophy
morals: 1. Of or concerned with the judgment of the goodness or badness of human action and character. 2. Teaching or exhibiting goodness or correctness of character and behavior
So for us stupid people in the audience could you perhaps enlighten us as to what distinction you're making, because to me both morals and ethics seem to be equally acceptable in this context.
I think that you might be trying to argue against a point that the GP post wasn't actually making. The GGP post said (and the GP post highlighted) that
"There is no such thing as 'judicial estoppel'"
jasomill correctly pointed out that judicial estoppel is in fact a real legal term (at least according to the authors of Black's Law Dictionary, Seventh Edition). Whether or not judicial estoppel actually applies to this case is outside the scope of his post.
"How about recognizing a moral difference between legitimate, sovereign states and pseudo-states run by dictators and tyrants?"
There are two problems with this that I can see:
1) Who gets to decide which are "legitimate, sovereign states" and which aren't? Me? You? What happens if we disagree? Sure some cases will be really clear, but what about the grey area in between? Take Saudia Arabia for example. Close US ally, but last I checked not exactly a bastion of democratic freedom. Do they get to come to the UN? What about China? Is that a dictatorship or do the people there genuinely like communism? What about the Britain? They're still ostensibly a monarchy, but I would hardly call them a "pseudo-state run by dictators and tyrants". As is usually the case in the real world, these distinctions are not nearly as black and white as we'd like them to be.
2) The whole premise of the UN originally was to give countries an open forum to work out their problems (or as you put it a "diplomatic sewing circle [where] the diplomats of the world [could] sit around and talk things over") so that we could avoid international disputes like the first and second world wars. If there's anyone that the world's liberal democracies are going to disagree with it's probably going to be "oppressive police states". Thus even if we could somehow agree on which countries are legitimate states and which aren't, excluding all those that aren't from the UN would be somewhat counter productive. It'd be like holding a public debate but only inviting people who already agree with you.
As for the UN not being democratic enough...
"Its 'legislative branch,' for lack of a better term, is made up of unelected ministers and ambassadors"
Actually, if you're referring to the UN general assembly here, it's made up of whatever representatives the member countries choose to send. If you think you're representative to the UN should be an elected official not an appointed ambassador then that's something you have to take up with your own government. That has nothing to do with the UN. Unless you're suggesting that you should also have a say on how other countries select their UN representatives. But that would be like someone from New York saying they should get to vote in the Texas Senate race. It makes no sense from a country sovereignty point of view.
"What happens if I get pissed off at the guy who's in charge of (for example) the ITU"
What happens now if you get pissed off at the guy who's in charge of (for example) the CIA? Sure you could write to your Congressman but he'd be unlikely to be able to do anything about it. Any sufficiently large bureaucracy must eventually resort to appointed officials in order to get things done. Otherwise we'd do nothing but vote on proposals all day long. If you really don't approve of a UN initiative you should pressure you're elected officials to either:
a) work in the UN to get it changed or, failing that,
b) ignore the UN recommendation. After all the UN has no binding authority over its member nations. If your country doesn't like what the UN is doing then don't go along with it. The US, after all, was able to unilaterally invade Iraq, no matter what the UN had to say about it. When it comes to the internet, where cooperation between nations is crucial, this type of lone wolf behavior could make interaction with other nations difficult or impossible. But if, as a nation, America doesn't like the UN ruling that may be a price you're willing to pay.
"The minute we started giving the UN actual authority...the body became little more than a benevolent, impotent tyranny."
I think this is just devolving into hyperbole now. But benevolent tyranny? Isn't that an oxymoron?
"Doesn't he lack "standing" (a legal term with a legal definition) to sue?
I think that's really what this whole thing is about. He wants to shut down people selling MAME boxes with illegal ROMs because they're undercutting his business. However he can't sue them for selling MAME (which may or may not be in violation of MAME's licensing) because he has nothing to do with MAME or its development. Only the MAME developers could launch such a suit. Similarly he can't sue his competitors for illegally distributing ROMs because he doesn't own the copyrights on those ROMs. At best he might happen to have a license to redistribute them. It would be up to whoever owns the copyrights on those old games to go after the ROM distributors. However there is very little profit motivation for anyone to do so because:
a) these are old games that aren't exactly pulling in lots of revenue right now, and
b) even if you did sue, most ROM distributors are fly by night operations. Even if they did show up to court you'd be lucky if the amount of money you'd get out of them would cover your legal bill.
So if he can't sue them for distributing MAME and he can't sue them for distributing ROMs what can he do? Nothing! However if he could manage to slide a trade mark on the MAME name under the RADAR and actually get it, he could then sue his MAME using competitors for using "his" trademarked name without permission. This would give him sufficient standing in court to purse a civil case for trademark violation. Since most ROM distributors are fly by night operations who wouldn't even bother to show up to court all he needs to be able to shut them down is to be able to sue them over something, anything, and he can put them out of business.
"I'd rather let the aggregated opinions of millions of consumers decide, thanks"
;-)
Why is this any better than the aggregated opinions of millions of voters?
I guess it all depends on who you distrust more, big government or big business. Or did those two have a merger already? I can never remember