And what of the cases where even respected authorities on law cannot be certain if something will or will not be found to be a violation of the law (or they are simply unaware of the law)? Do we have a duty to all become better lawyers than the foremost experts?
This is where the primary misunderstanding of the law comes into play I think. Everyone seems to think that illegal means don't ever do it, and legal means it's what you should do.
Breach of contract is illegal (not criminal, but still illegal), yet there is a whole examination into when contracts should be breached, and how to handle breaches of contract, and the obligations of the part aggrieved in such a breach.
The law is about explaining your options to people. "Sure, you can continue to follow her... but you may end up going to jail over it." "Sure you can post this article calling your governor a pedophile, but you may be sued for libel if you can't prove it in court." There's very little in law that can EVER be said for certain. Even if someone has clearly killed someone, they might get away with it, because the police totally botched the investigation and so, the prosecution could not present any of the damning evidence that they have, because it was would violate the civil rights of the accused to allow the police to use the evidence (say, it's been collected illegally).
One shouldn't expect the law to be crystal clear and unambiguous in all cases, because the real world is raw, grainy, and gray. A wife shoots her husband, is that legal or illegal? Obviously illegal. Oh, except he was a serial abuser. Self defense? Oh, that's legal. Except he was sleeping at the time. Oh? Wow, that's not legal. Except that he had been talking about how he was planning to kill her, and she started to believe that he would actually act upon this, and this was her only way to defend herself. Oh, wow, ok... that might be legal. Do you see how it works? Even the most clear cut legal case can be turned on its head by just the right tiny little nuance of a detail here or there.
The law will ALWAYS be complex, and there's no solving this problem, and sometimes, shit can only be worked out after the fact. But just because we cannot determine 100% if something was legal or illegal at the time of the act, and after the fact, we still require a magnifying glass to evaluate it, does not mean that we're being unfair, or that the person should get off scot free, because they couldn't know the law.
In civil law, the purpose is to restore the person to the state that they were at prior to the act or omission of the defendant. There are cases were mere negligence is sufficient to hold the defendant liable.
Look, I'm getting frustrated, because I TOTALLY UNDERSTAND THE ARGUMENT that you guys are trying to present: that it doesn't seem fair to hold people legally accountable for things that they didn't know were wrong in the first place. But the world doesn't work that way. A volcano doesn't care if you don't know that it's about to erupt; it will kill you regardless. Fire doesn't care if you know that it will burn you if you stick your hand in it; it will burn you regardless. The law doesn't care if you knew your actions were illegal at the time; it will hold you responsible regardless. Because the law applies to EVERYONE EQUALLY... the ignorant and the knowledgeable alike.
The whole idea that someone should be able to get away with a crime just because they didn't know it were a crime is ludicrous... you would create a situation like with patent infringement, where you're legally better off NOT KNOWING that you're infringing, otherwise you will triple the damages. If they permitted people to get off just because they were ignorant of the law, the first thing every lawyer would tell people is not "don't talk to police" but rather, "don't fucking ever look at a single law, EVER!" It would bread a massive population of people who are intentionally ignorant of the law out of legal advice from council. No one would
My examples may be ones that are unenforcable, but there are plenty of laws that are unenforced in general, until they decide to enforce it so they have a reason to arrest a person. Less laws that can be selectivly enforced would be a good thing in my book.
It wouldn't help. Cops would still pull people over for crossing the center line without signalling.
Cops really don't have to pull out esoteric unenforced laws to arrest people... there are perfectly applicable laws that would survive any legal cleanup that would allow cops to arrest a person just to do it.
Not to mention, in most cases, officers do not necessarily need an actual charge under which to arrest you. Which is why lawyers advise you not to ask an arresting officer "what charge are you arresting me for?" You won't always get any sort of useful answer, and they don't actually have to file the charges that they're arresting you for anyways.
So, yeah, your ideas sound happy and pretty, and like they would make a utopia, but they're fundamentally flawed in that your ideas won't actually fix anything at all. People aren't being arrested for driving as a female without a male escort waving warning flags, or eating an orange in a hotel room. They're arrested on suspicion of theft, or resisting arrest, or any of a number of other charges that would never go away even with sunset clauses for laws, and legal reviews for archaic and inapplicable laws.
Re:What does the hell does NP Hard mean?
on
Pac-Man Is NP-Hard
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· Score: 1
Informally, especially in computer science, the Big O notation often is permitted to be somewhat abused to describe an asymptotic tight bound where using Big Theta notation might be more factually appropriate in a given context. For example, when considering a function T(n) = 73n3 + 22n2 + 58, all of the following are generally acceptable, but tightnesses of bound (i.e., bullets 2 and 3 below) are usually strongly preferred over laxness of bound (i.e., number 1 below). T(n) = O(n100), which is identical to T(n) O(n100) T(n) = O(n3), which is identical to T(n) O(n3) T(n) = (n3), which is identical to T(n) (n3). The equivalent English statements are respectively: T(n) grows asymptotically no faster than n100 T(n) grows asymptotically no faster than n3 T(n) grows asymptotically as fast as n3. So while all three statements are true, progressively more information is contained in each. In some fields, however, the Big O notation (number 2 in the lists above) would be used more commonly than the Big Theta notation (bullets number 3 in the lists above) because functions that grow more slowly are more desirable. For example, if T(n) represents the running time of a newly developed algorithm for input size n, the inventors and users of the algorithm might be more inclined to put an upper asymptotic bound on how long it will take to run without making an explicit statement about the lower asymptotic bound.
Yes you are pedantically correct, but CS (where I learned the big-O notation) tends to abuse it, because in algorithm analysis making such a weak argument as "this linear function is O(n^12387...5)" is next to meaningless, and impractical. Yes, it is mathematically true, but for practicality (since computer science is the practical application of math) one typically considers big-O notation to describe the strongest upper-bound statement available.
Sure, mathematics has need to be stricter about the rules of Landau notation, but in computer science there's far less of a care about such details.
As a good example, talking about vector spaces in mathematics requires notation as to how many dimension the vectors hold (e.g. v elements R^42), meanwhile in practical physics, it's like "duh, of course this vector is three dimensional, why would you ask such a question?"
So, yes, you're right, and no, most computer science people don't give a shit. (My first response as a pedant though is "sorry, yes, I should have used theta-notation there.")
Your right turn on red example is defective, because he would most likely be hit by someone going straight, through a green light. The guy with green has the right of way, which should be clear to anyone with a legally obtained license.
And? You're not disproving anything I'm saying here.
You're literally saying that anyone who would be legally driving would have known that they had to inform themselves of the rules surrounding driving.
but ignorance of the law is simply a lame excuse, no matter how complex the law gets.
These are my laws, you must follow them or be found guilty:...*snip*... Since you can't ignore them, no matter how complex they are, I already find you guilty of infringing them. Extreme exemple, maybe, but nonetheless, almost as clear as some real laws....
Natural law holds that if you can exert your authority over me, you are capable of enforcing whatever laws you wish. Even the arbitrary "all users with the username 'snowgirl' are to be put to death"...
However, there are more powerful authorities than even you in this world, and they will likely object to this behavior.
However, if you want to sit down an construct real laws that are enforceable with another person, all nomic style, then actually you're completely allowed to. Sharia law, Kashrut law, Mormon law, and Scientology law all have a basis in that one contractually consents to be covered by those laws, and so long as they do not conflict with local, state, federal statutory law, then you're free to enforce those laws under the term of whatever contract you have.
If ignorance of the law is to be no excuse, then ethically, the body of law must be constrained to be small enough for a person to know all of it. Otherwise the law and police become indistinguishable from predators. and the collectively rational course of action for a neighborhood watch is to shoot them on sight.
I disagree with your assessment. Most crimes stem from from activities that all humans should understand are wrong, and the complexity of the law behind them is in finding the correct level of circumstances that apply to mete out the appropriate punishment. (In the US. In the civilized world, it's about finding the appropriate level of rehabilitation to get the offender.)
Civil infraction-wise, there are a large number of laws that pertain only to a specific area of activities. Let's take for example, I'm an incredibly well read person under the law... however, I know nothing about hunting laws. Does this mean that since I have more knowledge of the law beyond a reasonable person that such knowledge, being out of my scope of knowledge is thus too expansive and so we should not regulate hunting laws at all? Or should we recognize that anyone seeking to engage in an activity has a duty to learn about the laws surrounding that activity, so that they can avoid infringing upon the law?
Unenforced laws that are outdates certainly are an issue, but they're hardly a "problem". Because as noted: no one is going to enforce them. Also, those who would enforce them are generally aware that such laws would never carry through a court case, and the charges would be dismissed. (For instance, the "a man must precede a female driver with a warning flag" case: this is clearly a violation of equal protection under the law, and therefore unconstitutional. It may be on the books, but no one is going to enforce it, because no one is going to stand behind the enforcing officer and defend that law.)
So, a lot of laws end up hanging around on the books because they've never been properly repealed, but at the same time will never get enforced (until some idiot does try and enforce them, like the guy/girl who called up the authorities on his/her ex-wife/ex-husband cohabitating with someone else. They were charged with cohabitation, but later, the prosecution dropped the charges realizing that attempting to uphold that law in court would be nearly impossible.)
Piss poor example. Most everyone knows that you need a driver's license to be able to legally drive, yes? I mean, this is not some esoteric area of the law. Furthermore, to get a drivers license, one must take a written exam that covers the legal aspects of driving. The study guide is usually free of charge. The acceptance of a driver's license implies that the driver is familiar with the laws concerning driving. The driver doesn't have to travel to a law library and sift through a bunch of case history and whatnot to familiarize himself with the law.
And everyone knows that you need to get a license in order to run a business as well... and by getting that license you are implying that you are familiar with the laws concerning businesses.
Everyone knows that there are laws surrounding dumping waste... and they would know that they need to familiarize themselves with those laws before they just go out dumping wasting willy-nilly.
The example is not piss-poor, but it is basic and clear cut: we understand that there are laws that cover nearly all aspects of our life, and so we need to familiarize ourselves with them prior to performing that act. To think that starting a business, or dumping waste or any other activity is devoid of laws would be a ludicrous notion.
And while it is true that numerous aspects of the law are unclear and lawyers cannot say definitively what is and is not illegal in some cases, the vast majority of law (80%, let's say?) is relatively clear, and can be covered fairly easily.
Re:What does the hell does NP Hard mean?
on
Pac-Man Is NP-Hard
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· Score: 4, Informative
It means it isn't computationally solvable in linear time.
No, it can't be solved in POLYNOMIAL time. For instance, comparative sorting cannot be done in linear, yet is not NP-hard.
Something that is O(n^12387349892319348917359872394872328349872398723985729375982734598275) is in fact insanely hard, yet still not NP-hard.
Yes, indeed. And it comes down a lot to the same case as "driving too fast for condition". If you have a car accident where going slower would have prevented the accident, then you were driving too fast for conditions. "But there's no possible way that I could have known what the proper speed for the conditions were!" Indeed, but that doesn't matter... you were still driving too fast for conditions.
Look, it's clearly not cool that people can be found guilty of committing crimes that they didn't even know were criminal acts, but ignorance of the law is simply a lame excuse, no matter how complex the law gets. The idea is that the law should apply equally to all people, and that criminal law is written against behavior that is in and of itself wrong. Homicide is wrong, under all cases (except justification), the death of a human being through the direct action of another should be punished regardless of the state of the person making the act. Even if you're written off as incapable of constructing criminal intent, or understanding the difference between right and wrong, you are still punished, because killing someone else is wrong. PERIOD.
Look, yes, the law is complicated, I've looked at a lot of it, and yes it sucks that you can be held accountable to laws that you didn't even have a clue existed. And that's why you should never ever ever talk to the police, because even if you're a lawyer, you don't know the specific details of the laws you might be accused of.
But let's take an even lighter example, a civil infraction. There is a law that you must come to a full stop before making a right-hand turn on a red light. Someone else is making a perfectly legal maneuver through the intersection, as you fail to stop, and there is a collision of your vehicle with theirs. Now, say you didn't know that it was illegal to make a right-hand turn on a red light without stopping. That's reasonable, I mean, tons of people are unaware of that law. So... the person who's car you hit. They just get fucked because you were ignorant of the law, and so you can't be held accountable?
IT SUCKS, it's harsh, it's sometimes cruel, but it's THE ONLY WAY TO BE FAIR.
That means no American companies, no outsourcing to the U.S., and no data storage in the United States. The U.S. are international lepers in the privacy world and should be avoided at all costs.
Unfortunately, even this is not enough. The non-US company would have to ensure any and all contact with the US is prevented, to ensure that there is not even a crack of a sliver of the door to US jurisdiction.
The way they got a porno director here in the US who operated in California, was to order his product in Georgia and have them ship it there. BAM! Georgia claims jurisdiction and the guy goes to jail.
In fact, one of the wedges used to argue for jurisdiction over megauploads, was that they used PayPal. So, now you can't deal with USD, nor can you particularly even do business with American companies. That cuts out a lot of business, and every multinational company.
The world is getting so small now, that it will be impossible for any company or business person to ever manage to keep out from the from the ever expanding abuse of jurisdiction that the US is applying.
The main difference is that it's no longer just the intellectual elites that need concern themselves with it. People on slashdot do as well.
One of the very serious problems with life in the US, and I suspect the UK as well, is that one is not allowed to plead ignorance even though one would have to be a highly skilled attorney to know where the line is. Often times they don't even know until the courts rule.
Indeed, but that's the problem with every legal system. Being able to plead ignorance about the law means basically that you could get out of any criminal act with just a simple, "oops, sorry, didn't know!"
In general, if you chose to get into doing something, it is well-known that there are laws governing that behavior, and you need to inform yourself about the laws prior to striking out and doing it. Failure to do so indicates a willful ignorance of the law, and not an accidental ignorance of the law. You KNEW that there would be laws, and yet you declined to inform yourself about them.
The reason why you don't see more of these photograph cases is that the claimant has to prove other elements, too, including similarity, actual copying (at a minimum showing that the violator had access to the other work), and originality in the claimant's work. This isn't very easy, especially for photographs lacking the third element of arrangement. Note that it appears to have had the first element (rendition) in spades.
Exactly. And in this case, the defendant had previously infringed on the copyright of the plaintiff, and went out the reimplement the photograph just to avoid further licensing fees. The judge is simply reminding the defendant, "yeah, you can't do that now."
I guess he just had a really inept defense because this judgment should not have ended up this way based on that image.
There is also the special case that he redid the photo just to avoid a licensing lawsuit...
It's the worst example of how not to do reverse engineering: infringe someone else's copyrights at first, then when you're called out on it, go out and reverse engineer and reimplement without a clean box...
It is highly unlikely that the defendant ever would have been in trouble, if he had not previously infringed fully on the copyright, by reproducing the original without permission.
So what you are saying, OCG, is that attempting to avoid a licencing fee by using a similar but different piece of "intellectual property" should be illegal?
Apple Computer agrees with you. As you know, they own flat glassy tablets with rounded corners. Don't try to avoid patent licencing by making similar but different tablets...
... "patents" are different from "copyrights". Yes, they are both intellectual property, and yes they both have problems. However, in the case of patents, you are allowed in no way to reimplement something in order to avoid licensing fees. With copyright, as long as you had no access to the original material, you are allowed to reimplement an idea.
It's kind of already well-known in the F/OSS world that if you should separate your reverse engineering work from the reimplementation work, where the reimplementors are working solely off of design documents that are completely absent of code by the reverse engineers. It's called "clean box" reimplementation, and it's the safest way to ensure that your reimplementation does not infringe upon someone else's copyrights. Because if the person performing the reimplementation has access to the original assembly code, they might just get lazy and copy some assembly instructions rather than actually code the boring stuff out.
The law is nothing. Everything you thought you knew about human cultural transmission means nothing. We are now living in a world constructed completely of lawyers, by lawyers and for lawyers. What a sad, pathetic, worthless place we've made for ourselves, and for what? So some fucking cunt can harass fellow photographers over a fucking picture most people won't even see?
Dude, that's the world Jesus was purportedly born into. Have you seen how highly-observant Jews "haggle" over their mitzvot, and debate them and argue about them looking for essentially loopholes and such?
A world defined by legal red tape is hardly a new invention...
Yes, that's what I said, one hard drive they HOPE has evidence.
And the police will usually take the entire contents of your pockets as evidence as well. They don't have to prove that there WILL be evidence, they just have to prove that it is reasonably believable that they might find evidence...
Most jurisdictions allow police to impound property that was used in the commission of a crime. The problem is not a violation of the 4th amendment, as the police do not illegal search to find this cash... they either see it in plain view, or find it during a consensual search permitted by the owner. How do I know it is either of those cases? Because a) the police found it, so it was either in plain view, or they found it during a search, and b) because if the police illegally search your vehicle, then you can raise a 4th amendment argument that the search was illegal, and recover your property in the suit.
These seizures happen because people are retarded and end up consenting to searches. I watched helplessly my my apartment window as a poor couple in a dirty station wagon were pressured into consenting to a search of their car, whereupon the police officer found some drugs, and they were arrested and then sent to jail. If I had actually been a standing member of the bar, I would have walked out immediately, asked them to consent to legal representation, and then told them to shut up, and that they consent to no searches. The cop would have asked his questions, which they wouldn't have answered, they would have gotten a ticket, and they would have been on their way.
Instead, they were bullied into consenting to a search (which has always been the fastest way for police to circumvent the 4th amendment: by making it not apply) and ended up in jail over a relatively minor amount of drugs.
The problem isn't that the drug war is killing the 4th amendment, it's that PEOPLE ARE WILLFULLY FORFEITING THEIR 4TH AMENDMENT RIGHTS.
If you're transporting large amounts of cash, then hide it well outside of plain sight, and for the love of goat, don't consent to any searches!
In Washington state law, you can be found justified in committing any criminal act short of a homicide so long as your life was threatened. (The obvious choice in a homicide is that you should elect to die rather than take someone else's life.)
"I robbed a bank and didn't get any jail time for doing so, because I had a person there with a gun to my head the whole time." -- actually works.
Also, as noted below, complying with a court order is not a crime, no matter what it tells you to do.
Actually, that's inaccurate. If you're breaking the Fourth Amendment or the Fifth Amendment in the execution of a Warrant, whatever case you had vanishes in a puff of smoke once the accused asserts his Rights and can prove that they did it. Any information gained by the violation of the Fourth or Fifth and subsequent is inadmissible and you can't be tried on that particular Cause of Action ever again.
Eh... you're being somewhat inaccurate. While it is true that any evidence obtained through an illegal search is dismissed, and all evidence collected solely on the basis from that illegal evidence is also excluded due to "fruit of the poisoned tree" doctrine. However, if the police can come to the later evidence independently, then it is not fruit of the poisoned tree, and the doctrine of inevitable discovery says that even if evidence has been collected illegally, it can still become admissible later if it were inevitable that the police were going to discover the evidence anyways.
And you can actually be tried on any particular dismissed cause of action so long as it has not been dismissed with prejudice.
Does the judge have to believe so beyond any resonable doubt or is indefinite incarceration on these particular grounds not so carefully metered?
Civil contempt does not require the burden of beyond a reasonable doubt, because the idea is that you are your own jailer, because you could comply and release yourself from jail at any time. Thus, your refusal to cooperate is your automatic consent to continue being jailed. Is you're the only one keeping you in jail, there is no reason for a substantial burden of proof or a trial.
Realistically, if you have a plausible story, they almost certainly won't hold you for contempt. They can't weather the political fallout of holding someone indefinitely for failing to produce an item that was lost or forgotten. They certainly wouldn't want to risk having a higher court overturn this ruling because of it.
With civil contempt the standard to over turn is "abuse of discretion"... so, yeah, good luck on getting it overturned.
And can't weather the political fallout? There was a guy who spent 14 years in jail over testimony from his wife that he had money in off-shore accounts. Have you heard of the guy? I've heard of him, but can't remember his name... so, expect anyone to recognize the case when it comes to voting time? Unlikely...
What does plain view have to do with anything? Where's there a law against transporting large amounts of cash? As long as it's your money, it's completely legal. But in reality, if you're caught with it, they'll say it's "drug money" and seize it, even though there was no crime committed.
There are some restrictions on transporting large amounts of cash in some cases. Currency reporting flyer specifically references PL 97-258, 31 U.S.C. 5311, et seq. You are allowed to carry any amount of cash, but you have to report that you're carrying it if travelling out of the country.
It is perfectly within a TSA agents job and rights that if they find someone transporting something that could be reasonably believed to be at least $10,000 to question the passenger at the very least if they are travelling internationally, and if they have documented the transport of the cash.
Just like anything else, if you're going to be doing something unusual, then it pays to plan ahead and get things cleared prior to you ever showing up at the airport.
And they can hold you in jail for civil contempt because they don't believe that you actually lost it. "We all know you didn't lose it, so just tell us where it is, and we can get you out of jail."
Slashdot Mirror
And what of the cases where even respected authorities on law cannot be certain if something will or will not be found to be a violation of the law (or they are simply unaware of the law)? Do we have a duty to all become better lawyers than the foremost experts?
This is where the primary misunderstanding of the law comes into play I think. Everyone seems to think that illegal means don't ever do it, and legal means it's what you should do.
Breach of contract is illegal (not criminal, but still illegal), yet there is a whole examination into when contracts should be breached, and how to handle breaches of contract, and the obligations of the part aggrieved in such a breach.
The law is about explaining your options to people. "Sure, you can continue to follow her... but you may end up going to jail over it." "Sure you can post this article calling your governor a pedophile, but you may be sued for libel if you can't prove it in court." There's very little in law that can EVER be said for certain. Even if someone has clearly killed someone, they might get away with it, because the police totally botched the investigation and so, the prosecution could not present any of the damning evidence that they have, because it was would violate the civil rights of the accused to allow the police to use the evidence (say, it's been collected illegally).
One shouldn't expect the law to be crystal clear and unambiguous in all cases, because the real world is raw, grainy, and gray. A wife shoots her husband, is that legal or illegal? Obviously illegal. Oh, except he was a serial abuser. Self defense? Oh, that's legal. Except he was sleeping at the time. Oh? Wow, that's not legal. Except that he had been talking about how he was planning to kill her, and she started to believe that he would actually act upon this, and this was her only way to defend herself. Oh, wow, ok... that might be legal. Do you see how it works? Even the most clear cut legal case can be turned on its head by just the right tiny little nuance of a detail here or there.
The law will ALWAYS be complex, and there's no solving this problem, and sometimes, shit can only be worked out after the fact. But just because we cannot determine 100% if something was legal or illegal at the time of the act, and after the fact, we still require a magnifying glass to evaluate it, does not mean that we're being unfair, or that the person should get off scot free, because they couldn't know the law.
In civil law, the purpose is to restore the person to the state that they were at prior to the act or omission of the defendant. There are cases were mere negligence is sufficient to hold the defendant liable.
Look, I'm getting frustrated, because I TOTALLY UNDERSTAND THE ARGUMENT that you guys are trying to present: that it doesn't seem fair to hold people legally accountable for things that they didn't know were wrong in the first place. But the world doesn't work that way. A volcano doesn't care if you don't know that it's about to erupt; it will kill you regardless. Fire doesn't care if you know that it will burn you if you stick your hand in it; it will burn you regardless. The law doesn't care if you knew your actions were illegal at the time; it will hold you responsible regardless. Because the law applies to EVERYONE EQUALLY... the ignorant and the knowledgeable alike.
The whole idea that someone should be able to get away with a crime just because they didn't know it were a crime is ludicrous... you would create a situation like with patent infringement, where you're legally better off NOT KNOWING that you're infringing, otherwise you will triple the damages. If they permitted people to get off just because they were ignorant of the law, the first thing every lawyer would tell people is not "don't talk to police" but rather, "don't fucking ever look at a single law, EVER!" It would bread a massive population of people who are intentionally ignorant of the law out of legal advice from council. No one would
My examples may be ones that are unenforcable, but there are plenty of laws that are unenforced in general, until they decide to enforce it so they have a reason to arrest a person. Less laws that can be selectivly enforced would be a good thing in my book.
It wouldn't help. Cops would still pull people over for crossing the center line without signalling.
Cops really don't have to pull out esoteric unenforced laws to arrest people... there are perfectly applicable laws that would survive any legal cleanup that would allow cops to arrest a person just to do it.
Not to mention, in most cases, officers do not necessarily need an actual charge under which to arrest you. Which is why lawyers advise you not to ask an arresting officer "what charge are you arresting me for?" You won't always get any sort of useful answer, and they don't actually have to file the charges that they're arresting you for anyways.
So, yeah, your ideas sound happy and pretty, and like they would make a utopia, but they're fundamentally flawed in that your ideas won't actually fix anything at all. People aren't being arrested for driving as a female without a male escort waving warning flags, or eating an orange in a hotel room. They're arrested on suspicion of theft, or resisting arrest, or any of a number of other charges that would never go away even with sunset clauses for laws, and legal reviews for archaic and inapplicable laws.
Informally, especially in computer science, the Big O notation often is permitted to be somewhat abused to describe an asymptotic tight bound where using Big Theta notation might be more factually appropriate in a given context. For example, when considering a function T(n) = 73n3 + 22n2 + 58, all of the following are generally acceptable, but tightnesses of bound (i.e., bullets 2 and 3 below) are usually strongly preferred over laxness of bound (i.e., number 1 below).
T(n) = O(n100), which is identical to T(n) O(n100)
T(n) = O(n3), which is identical to T(n) O(n3)
T(n) = (n3), which is identical to T(n) (n3).
The equivalent English statements are respectively:
T(n) grows asymptotically no faster than n100
T(n) grows asymptotically no faster than n3
T(n) grows asymptotically as fast as n3.
So while all three statements are true, progressively more information is contained in each. In some fields, however, the Big O notation (number 2 in the lists above) would be used more commonly than the Big Theta notation (bullets number 3 in the lists above) because functions that grow more slowly are more desirable. For example, if T(n) represents the running time of a newly developed algorithm for input size n, the inventors and users of the algorithm might be more inclined to put an upper asymptotic bound on how long it will take to run without making an explicit statement about the lower asymptotic bound.
Yes you are pedantically correct, but CS (where I learned the big-O notation) tends to abuse it, because in algorithm analysis making such a weak argument as "this linear function is O(n^12387...5)" is next to meaningless, and impractical. Yes, it is mathematically true, but for practicality (since computer science is the practical application of math) one typically considers big-O notation to describe the strongest upper-bound statement available.
Sure, mathematics has need to be stricter about the rules of Landau notation, but in computer science there's far less of a care about such details.
As a good example, talking about vector spaces in mathematics requires notation as to how many dimension the vectors hold (e.g. v elements R^42), meanwhile in practical physics, it's like "duh, of course this vector is three dimensional, why would you ask such a question?"
So, yes, you're right, and no, most computer science people don't give a shit. (My first response as a pedant though is "sorry, yes, I should have used theta-notation there.")
Your right turn on red example is defective, because he would most likely be hit by someone going straight, through a green light. The guy with green has the right of way, which should be clear to anyone with a legally obtained license.
And? You're not disproving anything I'm saying here.
You're literally saying that anyone who would be legally driving would have known that they had to inform themselves of the rules surrounding driving.
Duh. That's exactly what I said.
but ignorance of the law is simply a lame excuse, no matter how complex the law gets.
These are my laws, you must follow them or be found guilty: ...*snip*... Since you can't ignore them, no matter how complex they are, I already find you guilty of infringing them. Extreme exemple, maybe, but nonetheless, almost as clear as some real laws....
Natural law holds that if you can exert your authority over me, you are capable of enforcing whatever laws you wish. Even the arbitrary "all users with the username 'snowgirl' are to be put to death"...
However, there are more powerful authorities than even you in this world, and they will likely object to this behavior.
However, if you want to sit down an construct real laws that are enforceable with another person, all nomic style, then actually you're completely allowed to. Sharia law, Kashrut law, Mormon law, and Scientology law all have a basis in that one contractually consents to be covered by those laws, and so long as they do not conflict with local, state, federal statutory law, then you're free to enforce those laws under the term of whatever contract you have.
If ignorance of the law is to be no excuse, then ethically, the body of law must be constrained to be small enough for a person to know all of it. Otherwise the law and police become indistinguishable from predators. and the collectively rational course of action for a neighborhood watch is to shoot them on sight.
I disagree with your assessment. Most crimes stem from from activities that all humans should understand are wrong, and the complexity of the law behind them is in finding the correct level of circumstances that apply to mete out the appropriate punishment. (In the US. In the civilized world, it's about finding the appropriate level of rehabilitation to get the offender.)
Civil infraction-wise, there are a large number of laws that pertain only to a specific area of activities. Let's take for example, I'm an incredibly well read person under the law... however, I know nothing about hunting laws. Does this mean that since I have more knowledge of the law beyond a reasonable person that such knowledge, being out of my scope of knowledge is thus too expansive and so we should not regulate hunting laws at all? Or should we recognize that anyone seeking to engage in an activity has a duty to learn about the laws surrounding that activity, so that they can avoid infringing upon the law?
Unenforced laws that are outdates certainly are an issue, but they're hardly a "problem". Because as noted: no one is going to enforce them. Also, those who would enforce them are generally aware that such laws would never carry through a court case, and the charges would be dismissed. (For instance, the "a man must precede a female driver with a warning flag" case: this is clearly a violation of equal protection under the law, and therefore unconstitutional. It may be on the books, but no one is going to enforce it, because no one is going to stand behind the enforcing officer and defend that law.)
So, a lot of laws end up hanging around on the books because they've never been properly repealed, but at the same time will never get enforced (until some idiot does try and enforce them, like the guy/girl who called up the authorities on his/her ex-wife/ex-husband cohabitating with someone else. They were charged with cohabitation, but later, the prosecution dropped the charges realizing that attempting to uphold that law in court would be nearly impossible.)
Piss poor example. Most everyone knows that you need a driver's license to be able to legally drive, yes? I mean, this is not some esoteric area of the law. Furthermore, to get a drivers license, one must take a written exam that covers the legal aspects of driving. The study guide is usually free of charge. The acceptance of a driver's license implies that the driver is familiar with the laws concerning driving. The driver doesn't have to travel to a law library and sift through a bunch of case history and whatnot to familiarize himself with the law.
And everyone knows that you need to get a license in order to run a business as well... and by getting that license you are implying that you are familiar with the laws concerning businesses.
Everyone knows that there are laws surrounding dumping waste... and they would know that they need to familiarize themselves with those laws before they just go out dumping wasting willy-nilly.
The example is not piss-poor, but it is basic and clear cut: we understand that there are laws that cover nearly all aspects of our life, and so we need to familiarize ourselves with them prior to performing that act. To think that starting a business, or dumping waste or any other activity is devoid of laws would be a ludicrous notion.
And while it is true that numerous aspects of the law are unclear and lawyers cannot say definitively what is and is not illegal in some cases, the vast majority of law (80%, let's say?) is relatively clear, and can be covered fairly easily.
It means it isn't computationally solvable in linear time.
No, it can't be solved in POLYNOMIAL time. For instance, comparative sorting cannot be done in linear, yet is not NP-hard.
Something that is O(n^12387349892319348917359872394872328349872398723985729375982734598275) is in fact insanely hard, yet still not NP-hard.
Yes, indeed. And it comes down a lot to the same case as "driving too fast for condition". If you have a car accident where going slower would have prevented the accident, then you were driving too fast for conditions. "But there's no possible way that I could have known what the proper speed for the conditions were!" Indeed, but that doesn't matter... you were still driving too fast for conditions.
Look, it's clearly not cool that people can be found guilty of committing crimes that they didn't even know were criminal acts, but ignorance of the law is simply a lame excuse, no matter how complex the law gets. The idea is that the law should apply equally to all people, and that criminal law is written against behavior that is in and of itself wrong. Homicide is wrong, under all cases (except justification), the death of a human being through the direct action of another should be punished regardless of the state of the person making the act. Even if you're written off as incapable of constructing criminal intent, or understanding the difference between right and wrong, you are still punished, because killing someone else is wrong. PERIOD.
Look, yes, the law is complicated, I've looked at a lot of it, and yes it sucks that you can be held accountable to laws that you didn't even have a clue existed. And that's why you should never ever ever talk to the police, because even if you're a lawyer, you don't know the specific details of the laws you might be accused of.
But let's take an even lighter example, a civil infraction. There is a law that you must come to a full stop before making a right-hand turn on a red light. Someone else is making a perfectly legal maneuver through the intersection, as you fail to stop, and there is a collision of your vehicle with theirs. Now, say you didn't know that it was illegal to make a right-hand turn on a red light without stopping. That's reasonable, I mean, tons of people are unaware of that law. So... the person who's car you hit. They just get fucked because you were ignorant of the law, and so you can't be held accountable?
IT SUCKS, it's harsh, it's sometimes cruel, but it's THE ONLY WAY TO BE FAIR.
That means no American companies, no outsourcing to the U.S., and no data storage in the United States. The U.S. are international lepers in the privacy world and should be avoided at all costs.
Unfortunately, even this is not enough. The non-US company would have to ensure any and all contact with the US is prevented, to ensure that there is not even a crack of a sliver of the door to US jurisdiction.
The way they got a porno director here in the US who operated in California, was to order his product in Georgia and have them ship it there. BAM! Georgia claims jurisdiction and the guy goes to jail.
In fact, one of the wedges used to argue for jurisdiction over megauploads, was that they used PayPal. So, now you can't deal with USD, nor can you particularly even do business with American companies. That cuts out a lot of business, and every multinational company.
The world is getting so small now, that it will be impossible for any company or business person to ever manage to keep out from the from the ever expanding abuse of jurisdiction that the US is applying.
The main difference is that it's no longer just the intellectual elites that need concern themselves with it. People on slashdot do as well.
One of the very serious problems with life in the US, and I suspect the UK as well, is that one is not allowed to plead ignorance even though one would have to be a highly skilled attorney to know where the line is. Often times they don't even know until the courts rule.
Indeed, but that's the problem with every legal system. Being able to plead ignorance about the law means basically that you could get out of any criminal act with just a simple, "oops, sorry, didn't know!"
In general, if you chose to get into doing something, it is well-known that there are laws governing that behavior, and you need to inform yourself about the laws prior to striking out and doing it. Failure to do so indicates a willful ignorance of the law, and not an accidental ignorance of the law. You KNEW that there would be laws, and yet you declined to inform yourself about them.
The reason why you don't see more of these photograph cases is that the claimant has to prove other elements, too, including similarity, actual copying (at a minimum showing that the violator had access to the other work), and originality in the claimant's work. This isn't very easy, especially for photographs lacking the third element of arrangement. Note that it appears to have had the first element (rendition) in spades.
Exactly. And in this case, the defendant had previously infringed on the copyright of the plaintiff, and went out the reimplement the photograph just to avoid further licensing fees. The judge is simply reminding the defendant, "yeah, you can't do that now."
I guess he just had a really inept defense because this judgment should not have ended up this way based on that image.
There is also the special case that he redid the photo just to avoid a licensing lawsuit...
It's the worst example of how not to do reverse engineering: infringe someone else's copyrights at first, then when you're called out on it, go out and reverse engineer and reimplement without a clean box...
It is highly unlikely that the defendant ever would have been in trouble, if he had not previously infringed fully on the copyright, by reproducing the original without permission.
So what you are saying, OCG, is that attempting to avoid a licencing fee by using a similar but different piece of "intellectual property" should be illegal?
Apple Computer agrees with you. As you know, they own flat glassy tablets with rounded corners. Don't try to avoid patent licencing by making similar but different tablets...
... "patents" are different from "copyrights". Yes, they are both intellectual property, and yes they both have problems. However, in the case of patents, you are allowed in no way to reimplement something in order to avoid licensing fees. With copyright, as long as you had no access to the original material, you are allowed to reimplement an idea.
It's kind of already well-known in the F/OSS world that if you should separate your reverse engineering work from the reimplementation work, where the reimplementors are working solely off of design documents that are completely absent of code by the reverse engineers. It's called "clean box" reimplementation, and it's the safest way to ensure that your reimplementation does not infringe upon someone else's copyrights. Because if the person performing the reimplementation has access to the original assembly code, they might just get lazy and copy some assembly instructions rather than actually code the boring stuff out.
The law is nothing. Everything you thought you knew about human cultural transmission means nothing. We are now living in a world constructed completely of lawyers, by lawyers and for lawyers. What a sad, pathetic, worthless place we've made for ourselves, and for what? So some fucking cunt can harass fellow photographers over a fucking picture most people won't even see?
Dude, that's the world Jesus was purportedly born into. Have you seen how highly-observant Jews "haggle" over their mitzvot, and debate them and argue about them looking for essentially loopholes and such?
A world defined by legal red tape is hardly a new invention...
Yes, that's what I said, one hard drive they HOPE has evidence.
And the police will usually take the entire contents of your pockets as evidence as well. They don't have to prove that there WILL be evidence, they just have to prove that it is reasonably believable that they might find evidence...
Most jurisdictions allow police to impound property that was used in the commission of a crime. The problem is not a violation of the 4th amendment, as the police do not illegal search to find this cash... they either see it in plain view, or find it during a consensual search permitted by the owner. How do I know it is either of those cases? Because a) the police found it, so it was either in plain view, or they found it during a search, and b) because if the police illegally search your vehicle, then you can raise a 4th amendment argument that the search was illegal, and recover your property in the suit.
These seizures happen because people are retarded and end up consenting to searches. I watched helplessly my my apartment window as a poor couple in a dirty station wagon were pressured into consenting to a search of their car, whereupon the police officer found some drugs, and they were arrested and then sent to jail. If I had actually been a standing member of the bar, I would have walked out immediately, asked them to consent to legal representation, and then told them to shut up, and that they consent to no searches. The cop would have asked his questions, which they wouldn't have answered, they would have gotten a ticket, and they would have been on their way.
Instead, they were bullied into consenting to a search (which has always been the fastest way for police to circumvent the 4th amendment: by making it not apply) and ended up in jail over a relatively minor amount of drugs.
The problem isn't that the drug war is killing the 4th amendment, it's that PEOPLE ARE WILLFULLY FORFEITING THEIR 4TH AMENDMENT RIGHTS.
If you're transporting large amounts of cash, then hide it well outside of plain sight, and for the love of goat, don't consent to any searches!
No, they have a hard drive containing gibberish that they HOPE is evidence. Not quite the same thing.
One harddrive that has all the signatures of being an encrypted volume, such as a header for the known PGP or GPG encryption system.
No. You cannot be compelled to break the law.
In Washington state law, you can be found justified in committing any criminal act short of a homicide so long as your life was threatened. (The obvious choice in a homicide is that you should elect to die rather than take someone else's life.)
"I robbed a bank and didn't get any jail time for doing so, because I had a person there with a gun to my head the whole time." -- actually works.
Also, as noted below, complying with a court order is not a crime, no matter what it tells you to do.
Actually, that's inaccurate. If you're breaking the Fourth Amendment or the Fifth Amendment in the execution of a Warrant, whatever case you had vanishes in a puff of smoke once the accused asserts his Rights and can prove that they did it. Any information gained by the violation of the Fourth or Fifth and subsequent is inadmissible and you can't be tried on that particular Cause of Action ever again.
Eh... you're being somewhat inaccurate. While it is true that any evidence obtained through an illegal search is dismissed, and all evidence collected solely on the basis from that illegal evidence is also excluded due to "fruit of the poisoned tree" doctrine. However, if the police can come to the later evidence independently, then it is not fruit of the poisoned tree, and the doctrine of inevitable discovery says that even if evidence has been collected illegally, it can still become admissible later if it were inevitable that the police were going to discover the evidence anyways.
And you can actually be tried on any particular dismissed cause of action so long as it has not been dismissed with prejudice.
Does the judge have to believe so beyond any resonable doubt or is indefinite incarceration on these particular grounds not so carefully metered?
Civil contempt does not require the burden of beyond a reasonable doubt, because the idea is that you are your own jailer, because you could comply and release yourself from jail at any time. Thus, your refusal to cooperate is your automatic consent to continue being jailed. Is you're the only one keeping you in jail, there is no reason for a substantial burden of proof or a trial.
Realistically, if you have a plausible story, they almost certainly won't hold you for contempt. They can't weather the political fallout of holding someone indefinitely for failing to produce an item that was lost or forgotten. They certainly wouldn't want to risk having a higher court overturn this ruling because of it.
With civil contempt the standard to over turn is "abuse of discretion"... so, yeah, good luck on getting it overturned.
And can't weather the political fallout? There was a guy who spent 14 years in jail over testimony from his wife that he had money in off-shore accounts. Have you heard of the guy? I've heard of him, but can't remember his name... so, expect anyone to recognize the case when it comes to voting time? Unlikely...
What does plain view have to do with anything? Where's there a law against transporting large amounts of cash? As long as it's your money, it's completely legal. But in reality, if you're caught with it, they'll say it's "drug money" and seize it, even though there was no crime committed.
There are some restrictions on transporting large amounts of cash in some cases. Currency reporting flyer specifically references PL 97-258, 31 U.S.C. 5311, et seq. You are allowed to carry any amount of cash, but you have to report that you're carrying it if travelling out of the country.
It is perfectly within a TSA agents job and rights that if they find someone transporting something that could be reasonably believed to be at least $10,000 to question the passenger at the very least if they are travelling internationally, and if they have documented the transport of the cash.
Just like anything else, if you're going to be doing something unusual, then it pays to plan ahead and get things cleared prior to you ever showing up at the airport.
How about the USB drive thing?
And they can hold you in jail for civil contempt because they don't believe that you actually lost it. "We all know you didn't lose it, so just tell us where it is, and we can get you out of jail."