How many politicians and judges would support the idea of making a company liable for what its users do, if the idea were extended logically?
Staffer in the employ of a congress critter illegally copies an image...congress critter gets to pay the statutory damages. Court clerk uses his net access at work to distribute illegal files, judge goes to prison.
I bet those goofy interpretations of who is liable would go away overnight...
I've been noticing, more and more often these days, that the old labels of republican, democrat, liberal, conservative, etc, etc no longer seem to apply.
More and more, we have libertarians and authoritarians. And nothing else.
The good guys are the good guys because they act like the good guys. Especially when it's inconvenient or not the most expedient option.
Only clinically insane people self-identify as bad guys. Everybody is the hero of their own personal story. No matter how vile, vicious and evil their actions and motivations are, human beings justify their actions and see themselves as the good guys.
So if everybody considers themselves good, and declares themselves and their actions to be good, simply believing them because they said so is absurd at best.
You have to look at actions and motivations. When self-proclaimed good guys act like bad guys, they are in fact bad guys, however they try to justify themselves.
All of these things could land on anyone even remotely connected to a successful terrorist attack, if it comes out that the plot was created, planned, driven and all but carried out by the feds.
Conspiracy laws are scary. You can wind up in prison for a LONG time despite having no knowledge whatsoever of the actual conspiracy or crime, simply for associating with people who do. Witness what happened to Osama bin Laden's limo driver! All he did was be employed to drive a car for a wealthy man from a respected family. And from a criminal conspiracy standpoint, that driver is just as guilty as Osama.
Real explosives aren't hard to make. Guy Fawkes tried to blow up a large building with simple black gunpowder, after all.
Yeah, the explosives the FBI supplies are fake. But it'd be a hell of a black eye for the agency if a fake terrorist plot turned real and successful because the "terrorists" used the FBI plan with their own home brew explosives and successfully blew up a federal building.
If a sting like that goes wrong, can the undercover agent(s) be charged with conspiracy to commit terrorism?
Or better still, run it as a sting operation. When the FBI mole gives them the Go-order, turn the guy in to the police. The group will, after all, have all the weapons and explosives the guy supplied them, and have tape recordings of him planning the terrorist attack, etc, etc.
It's bound to happen sooner or later, and can you just imagine the sort of PR disaster it would be for the feds?
They might have to go back to investigating crimes and chasing real terrorists. Apparently, real terrorists are too rare to justify the FBI budget, so they have to make their own at home in their garage.
I have a speech impediment that seems to be irresistible to jerks. They literally come out of the woodwork and go out of their way to make my online experience hellish. Simply because of what my voice sounds like. Every single one of them has a 5-star rating (or whatever the local equivalent is). They're complete jerks to other people too, and yet, they always have maximum ratings.
I avoid voice chats for this very reason. Because as soon as I say a single word, every jerk in the chat will try to abuse me into leaving. Most of them will down-rate me, not because I trash talk or abuse people, but simply based on the sound of my voice. The odds of a negative rating more than doubles if I respond in any way other than silently taking the abuse, and more than triples if I call them on their bad behavior.
End result: The people Valve wants to penalize will get the games for free, while the good, decent likable people will pay super high prices.
Companies claim that because they don't exert editorial control over what their users post, that the company therefore is not responsible for what their users say.
Fair enough.
But when a company starts exerting editorial control over posts, particularly posts that are about news or politics, at what point does the company lose that legal protection against being sued for slander/libel for what a user posted?
The Copyright Act specifies a number of rights, both those belonging to the copyright owner, as well as those to the end consumer.
If it's a violation of the law to copy when you shouldn't, how is it not a violation of the law to make it impossible to exercise a right guaranteed by the law?
Can you sue a publisher for DRMing your rights away?
One of the definitions of the crime of treason is making war against the military or people of the United States.
One of the definitions of the crime of espionage is transmitting secrets of the United States to its enemies.
Think about those two statements for a moment.
Is the Obama administration truly asserting that informing the American people of what the government is covertly doing in all our names, an act of giving secrets to the enemy?
And if Obama and his cronies are the undeclared enemy of the American people, isn't that rather close to treason?
If you have to stretch THAT far to make an irrelevant point, you have to reconsider whether it's worth trying at all.
But on the off-chance you're just an idiot: What the school did was illegal. A federal crime. We don't execute jaywalkers by burning at the stake, and we don't punish people for exercising rights. We're at least theoretically a country ruled by laws, not tyrants.
Actions have consequences, yes. But those consequences must be in accordance with the law, especially when those consequences are imposed by a government agency, such as a public school.
When those consequences exceed the limits set by law, or are even outright illegal, that's when any right thinking individual feels, as you put it, Oh horrors!
Throwing money at a system only works if the people in that system are not hopelessly corrupt and/or incompetent.
A bad apple teacher or two is one thing. But when you have principals whose attitudes towards civil rights and American values would be perfectly at home in North Korea, the system is obviously broken, if not rotten to the core. Someone like that has no business being promoted even once, let alone being in charge of a school.
I wonder...
How many politicians and judges would support the idea of making a company liable for what its users do, if the idea were extended logically?
Staffer in the employ of a congress critter illegally copies an image...congress critter gets to pay the statutory damages. Court clerk uses his net access at work to distribute illegal files, judge goes to prison.
I bet those goofy interpretations of who is liable would go away overnight...
(untitled comment)
So I'm curious...how exactly would the executive branch try to prosecute an ACTA/TPP violation if the treaty is never ratified by Congress?
Drone strikes, perhaps?
Re: Re: Re:
I disagree. Copyright trolls only rarely have sworn oaths to uphold the constitution.
Re: Re: Re: As governments fight reality they seem unable to face it.
I've been noticing, more and more often these days, that the old labels of republican, democrat, liberal, conservative, etc, etc no longer seem to apply.
More and more, we have libertarians and authoritarians. And nothing else.
Re: Re: As governments fight reality they seem unable to face it.
The good guys are the good guys because they act like the good guys. Especially when it's inconvenient or not the most expedient option.
Only clinically insane people self-identify as bad guys. Everybody is the hero of their own personal story. No matter how vile, vicious and evil their actions and motivations are, human beings justify their actions and see themselves as the good guys.
So if everybody considers themselves good, and declares themselves and their actions to be good, simply believing them because they said so is absurd at best.
You have to look at actions and motivations. When self-proclaimed good guys act like bad guys, they are in fact bad guys, however they try to justify themselves.
Re:
It has been said that a committee is the only known vertebrate organism with two dozen feet and no brain.
A bureaucracy is a massive network of committees. Do the math.
Re: Re:
RICO Act. Criminal conspiracy. Felony murder.
All of these things could land on anyone even remotely connected to a successful terrorist attack, if it comes out that the plot was created, planned, driven and all but carried out by the feds.
Conspiracy laws are scary. You can wind up in prison for a LONG time despite having no knowledge whatsoever of the actual conspiracy or crime, simply for associating with people who do. Witness what happened to Osama bin Laden's limo driver! All he did was be employed to drive a car for a wealthy man from a respected family. And from a criminal conspiracy standpoint, that driver is just as guilty as Osama.
Re: Re: Okie Doke
Real explosives aren't hard to make. Guy Fawkes tried to blow up a large building with simple black gunpowder, after all.
Yeah, the explosives the FBI supplies are fake. But it'd be a hell of a black eye for the agency if a fake terrorist plot turned real and successful because the "terrorists" used the FBI plan with their own home brew explosives and successfully blew up a federal building.
If a sting like that goes wrong, can the undercover agent(s) be charged with conspiracy to commit terrorism?
Re: Reality show is now.
Coming soon to a Courtroom near you!
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Fonzi Scheme
I dunno, I hear Fozzie occasionally snorts carpet cleaner in his dressing room...
Re:
Or better still, run it as a sting operation. When the FBI mole gives them the Go-order, turn the guy in to the police. The group will, after all, have all the weapons and explosives the guy supplied them, and have tape recordings of him planning the terrorist attack, etc, etc.
It's bound to happen sooner or later, and can you just imagine the sort of PR disaster it would be for the feds?
They might have to go back to investigating crimes and chasing real terrorists. Apparently, real terrorists are too rare to justify the FBI budget, so they have to make their own at home in their garage.
(untitled comment)
It won't work.
I have a speech impediment that seems to be irresistible to jerks. They literally come out of the woodwork and go out of their way to make my online experience hellish. Simply because of what my voice sounds like. Every single one of them has a 5-star rating (or whatever the local equivalent is). They're complete jerks to other people too, and yet, they always have maximum ratings.
I avoid voice chats for this very reason. Because as soon as I say a single word, every jerk in the chat will try to abuse me into leaving. Most of them will down-rate me, not because I trash talk or abuse people, but simply based on the sound of my voice. The odds of a negative rating more than doubles if I respond in any way other than silently taking the abuse, and more than triples if I call them on their bad behavior.
End result: The people Valve wants to penalize will get the games for free, while the good, decent likable people will pay super high prices.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Not an "Anonymizer" server.
So if I registered "Lance Cottrell" as a trademark, you'd have to stop introducing yourself, because your name no longer describes you?
Registering a common usage term as a brand name does not remove it from common usage.
(untitled comment)
Companies claim that because they don't exert editorial control over what their users post, that the company therefore is not responsible for what their users say.
Fair enough.
But when a company starts exerting editorial control over posts, particularly posts that are about news or politics, at what point does the company lose that legal protection against being sued for slander/libel for what a user posted?
(untitled comment)
The Copyright Act specifies a number of rights, both those belonging to the copyright owner, as well as those to the end consumer.
If it's a violation of the law to copy when you shouldn't, how is it not a violation of the law to make it impossible to exercise a right guaranteed by the law?
Can you sue a publisher for DRMing your rights away?
(untitled comment)
One of the definitions of the crime of treason is making war against the military or people of the United States.
One of the definitions of the crime of espionage is transmitting secrets of the United States to its enemies.
Think about those two statements for a moment.
Is the Obama administration truly asserting that informing the American people of what the government is covertly doing in all our names, an act of giving secrets to the enemy?
And if Obama and his cronies are the undeclared enemy of the American people, isn't that rather close to treason?
Re:
Obvious troll is obvious.
If you have to stretch THAT far to make an irrelevant point, you have to reconsider whether it's worth trying at all.
But on the off-chance you're just an idiot: What the school did was illegal. A federal crime. We don't execute jaywalkers by burning at the stake, and we don't punish people for exercising rights. We're at least theoretically a country ruled by laws, not tyrants.
Re: I'm outraged!
Actions have consequences, yes. But those consequences must be in accordance with the law, especially when those consequences are imposed by a government agency, such as a public school.
When those consequences exceed the limits set by law, or are even outright illegal, that's when any right thinking individual feels, as you put it, Oh horrors!
Re: Punish those responsible
Easier said than done.
Students, after all, don't have a powerful union backing them.
Re: Re: So typical...
Throwing money at a system only works if the people in that system are not hopelessly corrupt and/or incompetent.
A bad apple teacher or two is one thing. But when you have principals whose attitudes towards civil rights and American values would be perfectly at home in North Korea, the system is obviously broken, if not rotten to the core. Someone like that has no business being promoted even once, let alone being in charge of a school.