A lot of responses here have been something like "Lie. Your former employer can't badmouth you, anyway." Please allow me to assure you that this is not true.
This can bite you in one of two ways:
How would your former employer answer the question, "Would you ever rehire John in the future?" Because they can certainly answer "no" and not be committing any type of slander.
Backchannel research can and does happen. My wife was looking at a resume of a guy who claimed to have been laid off from a large firm that had just done a large, public round of layoffs. As it turns out, he was not laid off; he was fired for cause. Unfortunately for him, my wife found out about this through the grapevine.
All this poor sod knows is that he didn't get an interview. But really, he is now never welcome to work at my wife's firm, and "the grapevine" now knows what he is doing, so he will probably have difficulties finding work elsewhere. It's a small world out there.
The correct strategy is to take a cold, hard assessment of what happened. Be objective and dispassionate. List out the mistakes you made and what you've learned from them and how you won't repeat them in the future. List out what you feel you did right as well.
Distill all that into a concise story. We're talking about 30 seconds to a minute. Be honest, but put a dispassionate spin on it and keep your sense of humor.
Recite it in front of a mirror a few times and then test it on a friend. Ask him if he'd honestly hire you after hearing that, or if not, why not.
Keep revising until you've got a story that is truthful, but paints you in the best possible light. In terms of learning from your mistakes, accepting your former employer's mistakes and realizing that it was just business, and keeping your confidence about you.
Everyone is human, and we all eff up from time to time. How you pick yourself back up again says volumes about your character. Honest self-assessment and attempts at self improvement are good. Lying, blame shifting, and deceiving are bad.
After sleeping on it, I wonder if an unwed mother would actually be protected by "familial status". It's getting a little esoteric at this point, but technically marital status would not be covered under "familial status" since that refers to whether or not an applicant has or wants children.
It would seem to me that rejecting unwed mothers, but allowing wed mothers would be compliant with the law. On the other hand, it doesn't make good business sense to have a policy like that for two reasons. First, who wants to pay his lawyer $10,000.00 to get in front of a skeptical judge and try to argue that she was rejected because she was an unwed mother, not because she was a mother? And secondly, I have relatively fewer payment problems with single mothers. I guess they want to protect their kids zealously and not get tossed out on the street or something like that. Who knows?
That is not the case at all. The Federal Fair Housing Act does not apply to roommates. It only applies to landlords with 4 or more units.
And anyhow, it doesn't protect gays. Gays are not a protected class. I can put up a banner on one of my apartment buildings that says, "Not faggots allowed!" and while it would probably violate about a half dozen sign ordinances, it would be perfectly legal under fair housing laws.
On the other hand, if that banner said, "No blacks allowed!" I'd be in a world of hurt.
Well, he might want to look at what a fair housing suit would cost him vs. his plumbing bills. He his being penny wise and pound foolish.
Also, he should be billing his tenants for damage. Normal clogs are one thing, but if one of my tenants abuses the plumbing, he's gonna pay the plumber, not me.
Relax. Your right to be a racist jerk is firmly enshrined by your constitutional right to free association.
What you cannot do is, if you are a landlord who owns 4 or more units, discriminate based on 7 federally protected classes of people and whatever other classes your state and/or locality adds to the list.
But if you are just looking for a roommate, discriminate away. No one's stopping you.
But you cannot refuse to rent to ( and these are just examples, not a complete list), young people, single moms, blacks, fraternity brother, women, Jews, Catholics, Asians, Muslims, gays
Age, fraternity brothers, and gays are not federally protected. The rest would be. The federally protected classes are race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status and handicap. Your local jurisdiction may add more protected classes.
You can't discriminate on the basis of belief or 'creed'
Yes, you can.
They have to let "anyone" in who can pay, no matter what.
This is patently false. I am a landlord, and I have legally refused many people who can pay. It's only illegal to discriminate against a protected class. Of course, you can refuse a member of a protected class for some other reason. In other words, I can reject a black applicant, but I can't reject an applicant because he's black.
I'm not sure if you can discriminate based on someone's criminal record or legal history, but I don't think you can.
You absolutely can, and you would be a fool not to. If you rent to a child rapist and he rapes another tenant's child, you could be sued. Not good business practice.
You can do a credit check, or demand a deposit, to see if they are able to pay. I think that's the only discrimination you can do.
Again, patently false. I can put in my rental criteria that I reject anyone who wears green socks, and that is fully legal. If you wear green socks to the interview, I can reject you then since it's in my criteria.
More realistically, I discriminate based on cars. If your car is a mess in the back seat, you're rejected. Slobs are not a protected class.
I have a ton of criteria, all of which are legal. Some of them would surprise you, but I've learned a lot over the years.
Actually, gays and young men are not federally protected classes. In the states where I own property, I can put up a massive banner above the door that says, "No faggots allowed!" and be in full compliance with fair housing.
Age is also not protected federally, but it is protected locally for me.
The federally protected classes are race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status (that covers your unwed mother) or handicap.
And yes, you are correct about none of this applying to roommate situations. I just thought you might be interested to know that the classes that you think are protected are not actually protected.
the fiction world there are lots of animated and printed works that very obviously depict additional rape, child sex (consentual and non), incest, disfiguring and nonconsentual S&M and human bondage.
I am going to go out on a limb here and suggest that there exists a third class of reaction that a person can have to a subject outside of "interest in engaging in" and "outright repulsion by". The third reaction would be "enjoy fantasizing/pretending about".
Of course, I don't have to tell you that 99.999% of those who play Grand Theft Auto have zero interest in actually engaging in the various felonious in-game pursuits in real life.
In addition, I would assert that among those who enjoy fantasizing about rape, very few would ever have an interest actually committing a rape or being raped. Perhaps they enact their own fantasies with their partners, but I doubt many would want the real deal.
On the other hand, it is part of human nature to desire to protect the defenseless, including and especially children. This is why you see so many draconian and oftentimes blatantly unconstitutional laws being passed under the auspices of protecting kids. I doubt that there is much middle ground between those who would be interested in engaging in, and those who would be repulsed by, having sex with children.
That is why I think your use of Japanese pornographic tastes does not apply here. I'm willing to bet that the Japanese people, while they may enjoy fantasizing about rape, are not interested in going around raping each other. On the other hand, I doubt that there are many people who would be interested in only fantasizing, but not acting, on having sex with children. This is for the reason I mentioned above, the human-nature desire to protect the defenseless.
If it makes you feel any better, my daughter would enter the study, walk straight past all of the blinky LEDs, open up a drawer, and instantly dive into an emergency sewing kit.
"Ooh! Needles! Awesome!"
After about the 15th time, I finally moved the damn sewing kit. I'm a little dense.
Does Ashley Heyer own the copyright on her photo? Possibly not. Did she take it herself? If so, then she does. If not, she'd best get that copyright transferred to her from the photographer.
Be that as it may, the blogger's use of Ashley's picture would definitely fall under fair use. It could fall under the category of "News" (Ashley Heyer used this fake ID at such and such an establishment on such and such a date) in which case it would be a permissible use. It could also fall under parody, because if you read what the blogger wrote, you'd see she is definitely parodying your friend Ashley.
Either way, hopefully the blogger will file a counterclaim ASAP. We'll see.
In all states that I am familiar with, the alcohol vendor is actually required by law to confiscate fake IDs. Since the store owner believed (incorrectly, of course) that your ID was fake, she was required to confiscate it. Had she not confiscated it, she could be fined.
Your recourse, of course, is to call the cops and let them sort the mess out, which you did. Locking yourself in the store was a cute, yet freakish gesture.
Just ebcause she confiscated the ID doe not mean she owns the copyright.
Not the copyright on the fake ID, the copyright on the photo of the fake ID.
When you take a photo, you've created a copyrighted creative work. There may be limits as to how you can use that work, but you still own the copyright on photos that you take.
Let's say you take a photo of mickey mouse. Certainly that does not mean you somehow now own the copyright on Mickey! It means you own the copyright on that particular photo of Mickey.
Unfortunately, there isn't going to be much that you can do with your photo since it contains a copyrighted work and you don't own the copyright on the subject matter.
All I was doing before was pointing out the hilarity of the situation. The one tendering the DMCA takedown notice is the only person involved who has absolutely, positively zero claim to the copyright of that image.
So Rachel posts a photo of a fake ID. The copyright situation is an utter mess.
Rachel took the photo of the fake ID, so she would own the copyright on the photo. But there would be restrictions on her use of that photo since it contains an identifiable person as well as another copyrighted work.
The photo contains copyrighted forgery, and the forger owns the copyright on that. But there are restrictions on its use because the State of Maryland (presumably) owns the copyright on the license design from which the forgery was derived. (this ignores the obvious legal restrictions on presenting false identification... we're just talking copyright here)
About the only person who has zero claim to copyright in this matter is the underage drinker, herself. And yet she is the one who filed the DMCA takedown notice.
Three years later, the mother of the nine pound baby sued the presumed father for child support. The father denied paternity, so the court ordered a DNA test. The results of the test showed that neither the man nor the woman was the parent of the child.
Something can be biological, but not genetic. For instance, the odds of a child being a gay male increase the later he is born in birth order. This would obviously not be genetic--same parents. But it still could be biological (or social for that matter).
If it is social, why are there still gay people? I mean, if 90% of society is straight, why after generations and generations are there still gay people at all?
Genetics doesn't work that way. What you describe is true for any given gene, but how do we know that, assuming homosexuality is genetic at all (as opposed to biological in some other way), sexual preference is controlled by a single gene?
What if it is caused by the combination of one trait from the mother and one unrelated trait from the father, neither of which on its own makes a person gay, but if you get both, you're gay?
Surely two straight parents can have a gay kid. The child of one or two gay parents won't necessarily be gay, either.
The bottom line is that we don't really know yet what causes homosexuality.
A police interview is not public record and would never show up on a background check.
An actual arrest is public record, and will sometimes show up.
Regarding landlords, of which I am one, I would never deny an application due to an arrest record. If, on the other hand, he was convicted of some type of violent crime, you're right, he'd be out on his ear.
Why should people think anyone that talks about guns is going to go on a killing rampage.
For the record, he was not just talking about guns. He was talking about putting a gun in someone's face and pulling the trigger and how many times he would have to shoot someone in the face in order "to make sure the job is done".
Hopefully you could have seen the difference without the italics.
There are protected classes that are defined in federal law. So could you be fired for joining the wrong club? Yes, if that club does not imply that you are a protected class member (you could not be fired for joining the National Society of Black Engineers, but you could be fired for joining some other random club).
Could you be fired for publishing a book? Yes.
For worshiping the wrong god? No. Religion is a protected class.
It seems to me that, at a minimum, exercise of those rights protected by the Constitution should not be valid reasons for termination.
This is nonsense. You have freedom of speech, but you can certainly be fired if you walk into work one day and tell your boss that he is a loser, nobody who will never go anywhere in the company nor get anywhere in life and that the company would be better off if he just left and never came back. All of that may be true, but you are definitely now out of a job.
It's not your employer's duty to protect your constitutional rights, and you have no right to employment. Welcome to 'at will' employment.
Re:Freedom of speech is more important than your k
on
Thailand Sues YouTube
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· Score: 1
Ask a Thai person, who is not in Thailand (and not subject to Thai law). You will hear 1.725 earfulls about how great King Rama IX is.
It just grates on this American's ears to hear about countries where this kind of thing is illegal, since it is one of our founding principles and deeply-held values that you ought to be able to say any sort of insult you want about the king or any of the rest of the government.
Slashdot Mirror
This can bite you in one of two ways:
All this poor sod knows is that he didn't get an interview. But really, he is now never welcome to work at my wife's firm, and "the grapevine" now knows what he is doing, so he will probably have difficulties finding work elsewhere. It's a small world out there.
The correct strategy is to take a cold, hard assessment of what happened. Be objective and dispassionate. List out the mistakes you made and what you've learned from them and how you won't repeat them in the future. List out what you feel you did right as well.
Distill all that into a concise story. We're talking about 30 seconds to a minute. Be honest, but put a dispassionate spin on it and keep your sense of humor.
Recite it in front of a mirror a few times and then test it on a friend. Ask him if he'd honestly hire you after hearing that, or if not, why not.
Keep revising until you've got a story that is truthful, but paints you in the best possible light. In terms of learning from your mistakes, accepting your former employer's mistakes and realizing that it was just business, and keeping your confidence about you.
Everyone is human, and we all eff up from time to time. How you pick yourself back up again says volumes about your character. Honest self-assessment and attempts at self improvement are good. Lying, blame shifting, and deceiving are bad.
You're probably thinking of communities for senior citizens. There is actually a specific exemption for seniors-only communities written into the law.
You're welcome.
After sleeping on it, I wonder if an unwed mother would actually be protected by "familial status". It's getting a little esoteric at this point, but technically marital status would not be covered under "familial status" since that refers to whether or not an applicant has or wants children.
It would seem to me that rejecting unwed mothers, but allowing wed mothers would be compliant with the law. On the other hand, it doesn't make good business sense to have a policy like that for two reasons. First, who wants to pay his lawyer $10,000.00 to get in front of a skeptical judge and try to argue that she was rejected because she was an unwed mother, not because she was a mother? And secondly, I have relatively fewer payment problems with single mothers. I guess they want to protect their kids zealously and not get tossed out on the street or something like that. Who knows?
That is not the case at all. The Federal Fair Housing Act does not apply to roommates. It only applies to landlords with 4 or more units.
And anyhow, it doesn't protect gays. Gays are not a protected class. I can put up a banner on one of my apartment buildings that says, "Not faggots allowed!" and while it would probably violate about a half dozen sign ordinances, it would be perfectly legal under fair housing laws.
On the other hand, if that banner said, "No blacks allowed!" I'd be in a world of hurt.
Well, he might want to look at what a fair housing suit would cost him vs. his plumbing bills. He his being penny wise and pound foolish.
Also, he should be billing his tenants for damage. Normal clogs are one thing, but if one of my tenants abuses the plumbing, he's gonna pay the plumber, not me.
Relax. Your right to be a racist jerk is firmly enshrined by your constitutional right to free association.
What you cannot do is, if you are a landlord who owns 4 or more units, discriminate based on 7 federally protected classes of people and whatever other classes your state and/or locality adds to the list.
But if you are just looking for a roommate, discriminate away. No one's stopping you.
More realistically, I discriminate based on cars. If your car is a mess in the back seat, you're rejected. Slobs are not a protected class.
I have a ton of criteria, all of which are legal. Some of them would surprise you, but I've learned a lot over the years.
Actually, gays and young men are not federally protected classes. In the states where I own property, I can put up a massive banner above the door that says, "No faggots allowed!" and be in full compliance with fair housing.
Age is also not protected federally, but it is protected locally for me.
The federally protected classes are race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status (that covers your unwed mother) or handicap.
And yes, you are correct about none of this applying to roommate situations. I just thought you might be interested to know that the classes that you think are protected are not actually protected.
Just so you know, unemployment is an insurance policy, not something that an employer pays directly.
To give you an idea of how little of a deal this is, for my company, I pay about $150 in unemployment insurance premiums per YEAR.
You are probably thinking of severance pay, which some employers offer as a benefit, but it is certainly not required.
Of course, I don't have to tell you that 99.999% of those who play Grand Theft Auto have zero interest in actually engaging in the various felonious in-game pursuits in real life.
In addition, I would assert that among those who enjoy fantasizing about rape, very few would ever have an interest actually committing a rape or being raped. Perhaps they enact their own fantasies with their partners, but I doubt many would want the real deal.
On the other hand, it is part of human nature to desire to protect the defenseless, including and especially children. This is why you see so many draconian and oftentimes blatantly unconstitutional laws being passed under the auspices of protecting kids. I doubt that there is much middle ground between those who would be interested in engaging in, and those who would be repulsed by, having sex with children.
That is why I think your use of Japanese pornographic tastes does not apply here. I'm willing to bet that the Japanese people, while they may enjoy fantasizing about rape, are not interested in going around raping each other. On the other hand, I doubt that there are many people who would be interested in only fantasizing, but not acting, on having sex with children. This is for the reason I mentioned above, the human-nature desire to protect the defenseless.
Probably the only time it's relevant.
If it makes you feel any better, my daughter would enter the study, walk straight past all of the blinky LEDs, open up a drawer, and instantly dive into an emergency sewing kit.
"Ooh! Needles! Awesome!"
After about the 15th time, I finally moved the damn sewing kit. I'm a little dense.
Does Ashley Heyer own the copyright on her photo? Possibly not. Did she take it herself? If so, then she does. If not, she'd best get that copyright transferred to her from the photographer.
Be that as it may, the blogger's use of Ashley's picture would definitely fall under fair use. It could fall under the category of "News" (Ashley Heyer used this fake ID at such and such an establishment on such and such a date) in which case it would be a permissible use. It could also fall under parody, because if you read what the blogger wrote, you'd see she is definitely parodying your friend Ashley.
Either way, hopefully the blogger will file a counterclaim ASAP. We'll see.
In all states that I am familiar with, the alcohol vendor is actually required by law to confiscate fake IDs. Since the store owner believed (incorrectly, of course) that your ID was fake, she was required to confiscate it. Had she not confiscated it, she could be fined.
Your recourse, of course, is to call the cops and let them sort the mess out, which you did. Locking yourself in the store was a cute, yet freakish gesture.
When you take a photo, you've created a copyrighted creative work. There may be limits as to how you can use that work, but you still own the copyright on photos that you take.
Let's say you take a photo of mickey mouse. Certainly that does not mean you somehow now own the copyright on Mickey! It means you own the copyright on that particular photo of Mickey.
Unfortunately, there isn't going to be much that you can do with your photo since it contains a copyrighted work and you don't own the copyright on the subject matter.
All I was doing before was pointing out the hilarity of the situation. The one tendering the DMCA takedown notice is the only person involved who has absolutely, positively zero claim to the copyright of that image.
So Rachel posts a photo of a fake ID. The copyright situation is an utter mess.
Rachel took the photo of the fake ID, so she would own the copyright on the photo. But there would be restrictions on her use of that photo since it contains an identifiable person as well as another copyrighted work.
The photo contains copyrighted forgery, and the forger owns the copyright on that. But there are restrictions on its use because the State of Maryland (presumably) owns the copyright on the license design from which the forgery was derived. (this ignores the obvious legal restrictions on presenting false identification... we're just talking copyright here)
About the only person who has zero claim to copyright in this matter is the underage drinker, herself. And yet she is the one who filed the DMCA takedown notice.
That's just rich.
- Something can be biological, but not genetic. For instance, the odds of a child being a gay male increase the later he is born in birth order. This would obviously not be genetic--same parents. But it still could be biological (or social for that matter).
- If it is social, why are there still gay people? I mean, if 90% of society is straight, why after generations and generations are there still gay people at all?
- Genetics doesn't work that way. What you describe is true for any given gene, but how do we know that, assuming homosexuality is genetic at all (as opposed to biological in some other way), sexual preference is controlled by a single gene?
The bottom line is that we don't really know yet what causes homosexuality.What if it is caused by the combination of one trait from the mother and one unrelated trait from the father, neither of which on its own makes a person gay, but if you get both, you're gay?
Surely two straight parents can have a gay kid. The child of one or two gay parents won't necessarily be gay, either.
A police interview is not public record and would never show up on a background check.
An actual arrest is public record, and will sometimes show up.
Regarding landlords, of which I am one, I would never deny an application due to an arrest record. If, on the other hand, he was convicted of some type of violent crime, you're right, he'd be out on his ear.
Hopefully you could have seen the difference without the italics.
That would be great if he was an actual employee, which he was not.
Any more questions?
Could you be fired for publishing a book? Yes.
For worshiping the wrong god? No. Religion is a protected class.This is nonsense. You have freedom of speech, but you can certainly be fired if you walk into work one day and tell your boss that he is a loser, nobody who will never go anywhere in the company nor get anywhere in life and that the company would be better off if he just left and never came back. All of that may be true, but you are definitely now out of a job.
It's not your employer's duty to protect your constitutional rights, and you have no right to employment. Welcome to 'at will' employment.
Ask a Thai person, who is not in Thailand (and not subject to Thai law). You will hear 1.725 earfulls about how great King Rama IX is.
Go ahead. Try it.