Society doesn't exist, it has no will, no values, no interest, only individuals are real. The whole idea of "value to society" is simply meaningless.
Society most certainly 'exists', it may be a mirror of the collective will of the people who create it, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Imagine 'society' being a giant voting bloc comprised of everybody. If you were to take a vote of 5000 people, how many of them would vote to kill one of their number rather than half? Almost all of them. If that means that individuals must die, so be it.
You are advocating pure totalitarian collectivism, an ideology responsible for the death of hundred of million of people during this century. Muse upon it.
Rubbish. Totalitarian collectivism is firstly not what I was advocating, and secondly not responsible for hundreds of millions of people's deaths. I have yet to see an effectively collectivist society, and while that may seem to be a no-true-Scotsman fallacy, it may be that political theorists just have high standards.
In any case, even if it were true, so what if hundreds of millions of people died? That's the point of totalitarian collectivism- it doesn't matter if individuals die, as long as they serve the State in doing so.
You got it the other way around... it's not about "permitting" people to carry weapon. As long as you do not assault anyone, nobody has the right to tell you what you may or may not carry, even if they're wearing a colorful uniform.
All rights not explicitly granted to you are withheld to the sovereign body.
A hint: That sovereign body is not the individual.
I didn't get it wrong, you got it very wrong. In some places, that would be a lethal mistake if you tried to exercise your 'right' to carry whatever you wanted.
Turn in your geek card, please. Anyway, yes, I did. Because that's the point of examples- they tend to exaggerate in order to draw out the differences.
And in the grand scheme of things, people having the right to protect themselves and their family seems to have a generally positive effect on the rate of violent crime, at least in the U.S. Not all countries are the same, so if you think that legalizing guns will cause your citizens to go on killing rampages, then by all means, don't do that.
People have always had a common-law right to protect themselves, and I know of no jurisdiction in the US or anywhere else for that matter that removes such a right (despite the fact that such rights tend not to be written down anywhere).
But so what? You don't need a gun to protect yourself.
Society doesn't care about your life. Society also doesn't care about your ability to use tools. Society wants to protect itself, and if that means you lose your life because you can't use a tool, that's just tough luck.
Now, whether or not there is a greater value to society that comes from banning guns is a totally separate question, but is really the only relevant one.
The value of the public in their ability to protect themselves (especially when weighed against the ability of police to protect society, which is not the same thing as the ability to protect individuals, and the rate of crime) is not necessarily worth permitting people to utilize specific methods or tools.
For example, if we decided that it was very practical for people to protect their lives by equipping themselves with thermonuclear destruct devices activated by the lack of a heartbeat (which would probably solve all murders that weren't started out as suicide missions), the advantage, i.e., the protection of individual lives, would have to be strictly weighed against the risk to society in general.
Laws that prevent people from 'protecting themselves' serve the same purpose as any other law; they weigh the advantage to individuals against the advantage to society. That is the fallacy of the 'the police will not protect you' saw- the police were never intended to protect you. Their purpose is to protect society, and your life, in the grand scheme of society, is not very valuable. If you happen to lose it because the law prevented you from protecting yourself, that's really just tough luck.
Of course you can't; that is the principle of Sovereign Immunity. But see 42 U.S.C. 1982, perhaps one of the most important pieces of US civil rights law ever passed.
I'm not even sure that's true; I think that the use of technology can easily be controlled by control of thought, and this is their intent.
It may be perfectly possible for one to go through the dumpsters of grocery stores and take out things that are just beyond their legal sell-by dates but are perfectly edible and eat 25 top sirloin steaks a day for free.
But people don't, because they've been conditioned that doing so is unacceptable. They don't even think about the possibility.
You are implying (well, stating outright) the RIAA cases are illogical, and I disagree. I think they can be certainly logical, if you understand the premises from which they arise.
I agree that the original poster needs to get his premises right (and as a rule that's where a law school education helps, in my experience) but once he does that, there is not necessarily a problem.
For example, class action torts; lay-people often find it immensely discouraging that a class action lawsuit which may give rise to a multi-billion dollar judgment nets each of the individual plaintiffs a $20 coupon off their next purchase from the defendants. But that does not make such a system illogical, and from some ways of thinking it is in fact eminently logical.
In much the same way, lay-people (especially lay-people on Slashdot) often find the RIAA's actions infuriating, and many believe they are ultimately ineffective and self-defeating. I'm not so sure that's necessarily true; the fact that this string of comments arose in the first place suggests that in fact, exactly the opposite may be true. The Content Industry (if you'll pardon me coining a new term) may actually be succeeding in their approach, at least temporarily. Only time will tell, of course.
To be honest (and this is slightly off-topic), that's why I find myself shaking your head at most of your comments and stories. I'm not at all sure that you are altering or even materially affecting the strategic direction of the Content Industry with these lawsuits, or that others are. I believe that the law needs to come into a new paradigm for digital content (really, intellectual property in general) but I don't know that you or people like you will be the driving force behind it. And, at least to my way of thinking, it doesn't help that you come off as just as bad as any other lawyer to the public opinion.
There is an old saw that one of my old law professors used to tell every day- "Clients are always happy with lawyers who deliver to them what they desire." It seems self-evident, but it can just as easily be flipped around- the public doesn't care if lawyers are doing their jobs with the utmost integrity and dignity if those lawyers don't deliver what the public wants. You're preaching to the choir here on Slashdot- these people want what you have to sell, and they're happy with what you deliver because it's what they want. But that doesn't really mean much elsewhere. Slashdot is not the people.
A shoplifter is grateful beyond belief to his lawyer who gets him out of a jail sentence, but the public at large is horrified that a criminal is being released back onto the streets in order that he may commit further crimes. The lawyer is not going to convince the public that his clients weren't shoplifting by defending more of them more vigerously. He's just going to entrench the public into a distrust of lawyers stopping those 'criminal scum' from getting their just deserts, and incite a resentment against people accused of shoplifting.
Lawyers have won some of this century's most celebrated social victories. Lawyers won Brown v. Board of Education. Lawyers won Griswold v. Connecticut and Roe v. Wade. If you lean that way, Lawyers won Heller v. District of Columbia. But, and I say this with respect, lawyers will not win the Recording Industry v. The People. That's a battle The People will have to fight on their own, in the hearts and minds of public opinion and in the halls of Congress. I don't think it's something you can win in the Court. Because as long as people believe that other people are criminals, having lawyers get them off occasionally just isn't enough.
I find it vaguely bemusing that you, who are a lawyer, considers that "You cannot get the answer to legal questions by engaging in logic".
Logic is really nothing more than a system which takes building blocks, original premises, and allows them to be applied. It is nothing without original statements.
The judicial system frustratingly insists upon trying to operate the same way.
Wouldn't it be very convenient of judges could just come up with whatever conclusions they felt like, after all? "I had a peanut butter sandwich for lunch today, and therefore I find for the Defendant. Action dismissed!"
The only real difficulty in applying logic to the law is that the weighed value of specific original premises (precedent, law, etc) tends to change as time changes and depending on which judge is analyzing them. But the results most certainly do depend on logic, and the weighted values of the original premises are not simply pulled out of thin air. There is often, if not always, method to the madness.
What about if say for example, video of you pooping every day was published on the internet from multiple angles? Or maybe you masturbating or having sex?
I would be annoyed. But so what? What of those things should embarrass me?
The need for privacy is a product of evolution, and is seen in many species other than humans. Children can be seen harnessing these feelings as they mature, initially not seeing anything wrong with getting naked in public, but eventually hiding their private parts from even their parents. Many people are even embarrassed to get naked for a doctor. It makes you feel vulnerable, and nudity isn't the only thing that's private, and certainly not the only way we can feel vulnerable.
That's true of people who are products of certain cultures. It's cultural, not biological.
Again, you misunderstand my point. If you need privacy, you're giving people an opening via which they can ruthlessly exploit you- and they will. You are much better off realizing that the need for privacy is irrational, and that, while it's a good thing to have, if it goes away you're not terribly upset by it.
I was talking about privacy and being blackmailed.
You're talking about the government deciding to put pressure on you- well, here's a hint. The government doesn't have to blackmail you with your private information- it can extort you with threats, instead.
Your privacy, or lack thereof, won't stop the government from putting pressure on you if it decides that doing so is necessary. The government has already got the ability to do what you're talking about in general, and it already utilizes it. It's done so for more than a hundred years. The government already has more than sufficient resources to throw at the problem to solve it; making it easier doesn't help them very much.
I think one can reasonably take the position (like I do) that I might be annoyed if something private about my life were to be released. My credit card number, for example, or conversations I have with friends and relatives. But I wouldn't be ashamed or otherwise hurt.
I may not want it to be released, but if it were released, the only major harm would be my annoyance.
Demand privacy. Do not require it, or you will become a slave to it. You can't be blackmailed if you have no secrets...
Lots and lots of these boxes are in use, secured only by 40 bit WEP. I'm saying that considering that WEP can be cracked with great ease, how easy would it be to deny that the traffic came from you. Could someone up in court simply say "I didn't do it, I guess someone must be abusing my computer/access point".
Sure you could say it.
That argument, however, would not get you very far; it would be akin to arguing that somebody broke into your house, plugged their laptop into your router, and started downloading kiddy porn.
"Sure", the court will say. "That's a very nice story, and I'm sure it's very favorable to you. Have you got any proof it happened?"
Tossing out random and wild theoretical scenarios in which it is possible, but very unlikely, that somebody else did what you've been accused of and you've been framed is not generally looked upon very nicely by the Court unless you can provide some hard evidence to back it up.
Yes, it may introduce some doubt. The amount of doubt it introduces, however, is likely to be so small as to be unreasonable.
First of all, plausible deniability is not really a legal concept.
But secondly, the concept which you seem to be attempting to get across (i.e., introducing sufficient doubt so as to not meet the standard of beyond a reasonable doubt) is not really relevant here. This appears to be a civil matter, in which case, it is on the balance of probability.
Moreover, you're basically saying that the majority of BT's customers were negligent and should be held liable for their negligence? I'm not sure they'd be happy about that. It's not like it's BT's fault.
In my personal experience, that's rubbish. In 99.99% of cases, people either do know, or should know (they have a responsibility to find out) what the laws are affecting what they're doing. Not everybody needs to know all the laws all the time, but you do have a responsibility before embarking on a venture to examine the legal aspects surrounding it.
And that's only gotten easier as time goes on, especially with the searchability of legal codes (although to be honest, at the major law libraries, the librarians will generally be happy as clams to help you out even if you have no idea where to start).
If you drive a car, you're expected to figure out what rules (highway traffic act?) apply to doing so and figure out how to follow them. If you start a restaurant, the same thing applies.
If you're not interested in going to that trouble, you don't have to do it. It's like paying your income taxes- you're expected to figure out how to comply with the income tax act. If you don't want to do that, then you can just not make money (or alternatively not report your income and wait for the IRS to jump down your neck, but each to his or her own).
Very rarely indeed have I seen people get into trouble because they were truly ignorant of the law. Far more often, it's willful blindness.
Who's is? All the PCs I administer and have set up have their homepage set to 'about:blank'. There's a search bar in the top right-hand corner of the browser; I'll use that if I need to search. There's no reason to load google or any other search engine prematurely.
Slashdot Mirror
Society most certainly 'exists', it may be a mirror of the collective will of the people who create it, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Imagine 'society' being a giant voting bloc comprised of everybody. If you were to take a vote of 5000 people, how many of them would vote to kill one of their number rather than half? Almost all of them. If that means that individuals must die, so be it.
Rubbish. Totalitarian collectivism is firstly not what I was advocating, and secondly not responsible for hundreds of millions of people's deaths. I have yet to see an effectively collectivist society, and while that may seem to be a no-true-Scotsman fallacy, it may be that political theorists just have high standards.
In any case, even if it were true, so what if hundreds of millions of people died? That's the point of totalitarian collectivism- it doesn't matter if individuals die, as long as they serve the State in doing so.
All rights not explicitly granted to you are withheld to the sovereign body.
A hint: That sovereign body is not the individual.
I didn't get it wrong, you got it very wrong. In some places, that would be a lethal mistake if you tried to exercise your 'right' to carry whatever you wanted.
Turn in your geek card, please. Anyway, yes, I did. Because that's the point of examples- they tend to exaggerate in order to draw out the differences.
People have always had a common-law right to protect themselves, and I know of no jurisdiction in the US or anywhere else for that matter that removes such a right (despite the fact that such rights tend not to be written down anywhere).
But so what? You don't need a gun to protect yourself.
Society doesn't care about your life. Society also doesn't care about your ability to use tools. Society wants to protect itself, and if that means you lose your life because you can't use a tool, that's just tough luck.
Now, whether or not there is a greater value to society that comes from banning guns is a totally separate question, but is really the only relevant one.
I'm not sure it means that, either.
The value of the public in their ability to protect themselves (especially when weighed against the ability of police to protect society, which is not the same thing as the ability to protect individuals, and the rate of crime) is not necessarily worth permitting people to utilize specific methods or tools.
For example, if we decided that it was very practical for people to protect their lives by equipping themselves with thermonuclear destruct devices activated by the lack of a heartbeat (which would probably solve all murders that weren't started out as suicide missions), the advantage, i.e., the protection of individual lives, would have to be strictly weighed against the risk to society in general.
Laws that prevent people from 'protecting themselves' serve the same purpose as any other law; they weigh the advantage to individuals against the advantage to society. That is the fallacy of the 'the police will not protect you' saw- the police were never intended to protect you. Their purpose is to protect society, and your life, in the grand scheme of society, is not very valuable. If you happen to lose it because the law prevented you from protecting yourself, that's really just tough luck.
Also, academics do have a stake- they have a stake in being right, because that is what builds an academic's reputation.
What about, for example, limitations of liability?
Of course you can't; that is the principle of Sovereign Immunity. But see 42 U.S.C. 1982, perhaps one of the most important pieces of US civil rights law ever passed.
They generally waive that immunity.
I'm not even sure that's true; I think that the use of technology can easily be controlled by control of thought, and this is their intent.
It may be perfectly possible for one to go through the dumpsters of grocery stores and take out things that are just beyond their legal sell-by dates but are perfectly edible and eat 25 top sirloin steaks a day for free.
But people don't, because they've been conditioned that doing so is unacceptable. They don't even think about the possibility.
You are implying (well, stating outright) the RIAA cases are illogical, and I disagree. I think they can be certainly logical, if you understand the premises from which they arise.
I agree that the original poster needs to get his premises right (and as a rule that's where a law school education helps, in my experience) but once he does that, there is not necessarily a problem.
For example, class action torts; lay-people often find it immensely discouraging that a class action lawsuit which may give rise to a multi-billion dollar judgment nets each of the individual plaintiffs a $20 coupon off their next purchase from the defendants. But that does not make such a system illogical, and from some ways of thinking it is in fact eminently logical.
In much the same way, lay-people (especially lay-people on Slashdot) often find the RIAA's actions infuriating, and many believe they are ultimately ineffective and self-defeating. I'm not so sure that's necessarily true; the fact that this string of comments arose in the first place suggests that in fact, exactly the opposite may be true. The Content Industry (if you'll pardon me coining a new term) may actually be succeeding in their approach, at least temporarily. Only time will tell, of course.
To be honest (and this is slightly off-topic), that's why I find myself shaking your head at most of your comments and stories. I'm not at all sure that you are altering or even materially affecting the strategic direction of the Content Industry with these lawsuits, or that others are. I believe that the law needs to come into a new paradigm for digital content (really, intellectual property in general) but I don't know that you or people like you will be the driving force behind it. And, at least to my way of thinking, it doesn't help that you come off as just as bad as any other lawyer to the public opinion.
There is an old saw that one of my old law professors used to tell every day- "Clients are always happy with lawyers who deliver to them what they desire." It seems self-evident, but it can just as easily be flipped around- the public doesn't care if lawyers are doing their jobs with the utmost integrity and dignity if those lawyers don't deliver what the public wants. You're preaching to the choir here on Slashdot- these people want what you have to sell, and they're happy with what you deliver because it's what they want. But that doesn't really mean much elsewhere. Slashdot is not the people.
A shoplifter is grateful beyond belief to his lawyer who gets him out of a jail sentence, but the public at large is horrified that a criminal is being released back onto the streets in order that he may commit further crimes. The lawyer is not going to convince the public that his clients weren't shoplifting by defending more of them more vigerously. He's just going to entrench the public into a distrust of lawyers stopping those 'criminal scum' from getting their just deserts, and incite a resentment against people accused of shoplifting.
Lawyers have won some of this century's most celebrated social victories. Lawyers won Brown v. Board of Education. Lawyers won Griswold v. Connecticut and Roe v. Wade. If you lean that way, Lawyers won Heller v. District of Columbia. But, and I say this with respect, lawyers will not win the Recording Industry v. The People. That's a battle The People will have to fight on their own, in the hearts and minds of public opinion and in the halls of Congress. I don't think it's something you can win in the Court. Because as long as people believe that other people are criminals, having lawyers get them off occasionally just isn't enough.
I find it vaguely bemusing that you, who are a lawyer, considers that "You cannot get the answer to legal questions by engaging in logic".
Logic is really nothing more than a system which takes building blocks, original premises, and allows them to be applied. It is nothing without original statements.
The judicial system frustratingly insists upon trying to operate the same way.
Wouldn't it be very convenient of judges could just come up with whatever conclusions they felt like, after all? "I had a peanut butter sandwich for lunch today, and therefore I find for the Defendant. Action dismissed!"
The only real difficulty in applying logic to the law is that the weighed value of specific original premises (precedent, law, etc) tends to change as time changes and depending on which judge is analyzing them. But the results most certainly do depend on logic, and the weighted values of the original premises are not simply pulled out of thin air. There is often, if not always, method to the madness.
The question is not whether they need to, but whether they will.
The issue is about minimizing your weaknesses. And the need for privacy is a weakness.
I did not bring up guilt by association. I spoke about 'conversations with friends and relatives'. That's not the same thing.
I wasn't even talking about the government blackmailing you; I just pointed out the government doesn't need to blackmail you.
You seem to have read my comment and entirely misconstrued it.
I would be annoyed. But so what? What of those things should embarrass me?
That's true of people who are products of certain cultures. It's cultural, not biological.
Again, you misunderstand my point. If you need privacy, you're giving people an opening via which they can ruthlessly exploit you- and they will. You are much better off realizing that the need for privacy is irrational, and that, while it's a good thing to have, if it goes away you're not terribly upset by it.
That's not at all the same thing, though.
I was talking about privacy and being blackmailed.
You're talking about the government deciding to put pressure on you- well, here's a hint. The government doesn't have to blackmail you with your private information- it can extort you with threats, instead.
Your privacy, or lack thereof, won't stop the government from putting pressure on you if it decides that doing so is necessary. The government has already got the ability to do what you're talking about in general, and it already utilizes it. It's done so for more than a hundred years. The government already has more than sufficient resources to throw at the problem to solve it; making it easier doesn't help them very much.
I think one can reasonably take the position (like I do) that I might be annoyed if something private about my life were to be released. My credit card number, for example, or conversations I have with friends and relatives. But I wouldn't be ashamed or otherwise hurt.
I may not want it to be released, but if it were released, the only major harm would be my annoyance.
Demand privacy. Do not require it, or you will become a slave to it. You can't be blackmailed if you have no secrets...
Um, lolwut? I have actually done the same sort of roaming that's described in TFA.
My carrier updated my usage patterns within 24 hours of each use.
That's their problem right there. Those people are elitists. They believe they are unique and special.
Having been taught this from the beginning, it's unsurprising, but it's also total crap.
Look at the US Republicans. Do you think they're left wing too?
They don't have to prove it was you.
They just have to prove it was more likely than not it was you.
There's a tremendous and significant difference.
They wouldn't really even have to demand access to your computer to check it (although they would undoubtedly do so anyway).
They'd just ask you to prove it, and good luck with that.
Sure you could say it.
That argument, however, would not get you very far; it would be akin to arguing that somebody broke into your house, plugged their laptop into your router, and started downloading kiddy porn.
"Sure", the court will say. "That's a very nice story, and I'm sure it's very favorable to you. Have you got any proof it happened?"
Tossing out random and wild theoretical scenarios in which it is possible, but very unlikely, that somebody else did what you've been accused of and you've been framed is not generally looked upon very nicely by the Court unless you can provide some hard evidence to back it up.
Yes, it may introduce some doubt. The amount of doubt it introduces, however, is likely to be so small as to be unreasonable.
First of all, plausible deniability is not really a legal concept.
But secondly, the concept which you seem to be attempting to get across (i.e., introducing sufficient doubt so as to not meet the standard of beyond a reasonable doubt) is not really relevant here. This appears to be a civil matter, in which case, it is on the balance of probability.
Moreover, you're basically saying that the majority of BT's customers were negligent and should be held liable for their negligence? I'm not sure they'd be happy about that. It's not like it's BT's fault.
In my personal experience, that's rubbish. In 99.99% of cases, people either do know, or should know (they have a responsibility to find out) what the laws are affecting what they're doing. Not everybody needs to know all the laws all the time, but you do have a responsibility before embarking on a venture to examine the legal aspects surrounding it.
And that's only gotten easier as time goes on, especially with the searchability of legal codes (although to be honest, at the major law libraries, the librarians will generally be happy as clams to help you out even if you have no idea where to start).
If you drive a car, you're expected to figure out what rules (highway traffic act?) apply to doing so and figure out how to follow them. If you start a restaurant, the same thing applies.
If you're not interested in going to that trouble, you don't have to do it. It's like paying your income taxes- you're expected to figure out how to comply with the income tax act. If you don't want to do that, then you can just not make money (or alternatively not report your income and wait for the IRS to jump down your neck, but each to his or her own).
Very rarely indeed have I seen people get into trouble because they were truly ignorant of the law. Far more often, it's willful blindness.
Who's is? All the PCs I administer and have set up have their homepage set to 'about:blank'. There's a search bar in the top right-hand corner of the browser; I'll use that if I need to search. There's no reason to load google or any other search engine prematurely.