Precisely. The entire point of a contract--any contract--is to limit the freedom of both parties in specifically enumerated ways. As such, it's entirely appropriate for a government tasked with upholding the freedom of its people to place reasonable restrictions on what can and cannot constitute a valid contract.
And on the other hand, sometimes they handle things very dangerously wrong.
My first experience with a 911 call was one such time. (There have been two; the other one involved reporting a house fire I saw, which it turned out they were already aware of.)
Several years ago, I was working at the front desk at a local clinic, when one day some guy walked in. He was apparently drunk or high or something, less than completely coherent, and behaved very belligerently, to the point where we got worried enough that one of my coworkers called 911.
The dispatcher answered with "911, can you please hold?" And proceeded to put her on hold without even ascertaining the details of the situation first. By the time the dispatcher got back around to us a few minutes later, we had managed to defuse the situation ourselves and get the guy to leave, but it could easily have gone a very different way!
Well, maybe not in a science context, but of course such reciprocity lies at the heart of Richard Stallman's GNU General Public License. The GNU GPL is also something that is often called "viral", but a better name might be evangelical. Let's hope that MNI's project is as successful in spreading the word about open science as the GPL has been in propagating free software.
...and that's why this will fail. Genuine reciprocity is voluntary, not coerced. "Viral" is a very good term for the GPL: if you write a program that has 99 features yourself, but you need a GPL library to make the 100th feature work, it "infects" your entire codebase and forces you to GPL the entire thing, essentially claiming all your code for the GPL even though the writer of the code that infected it did nothing to earn it.
What Stallman's zealotry has been most "effective in propagating" is backlash against Free Software. By the 90s it had already gotten so bad that a bunch of the best and brightest developers around got together and formed the Open Source Initiative that was basically dedicated to the idea that "we're really not all as bad as those weirdos in the FSF." And their more moderate, non-coercive principles have proceeded to make a huge difference in the world since then. Today everyone knows what "open source" means, while the FSF are still essentially ignored and unknown outside of a very specific niche in the programming community.
And that's a real shame because they've done a lot of good work and come up with a lot of good ideas that deserve to be listened to. If only they hadn't gone with what's basically the worst possible way to implement their ideas, the world would probably be a noticeably better place today for it. I guess this is why we can't have nice things.
If MNI is trying to consciously imitate them, all I can say is plus ca change...
The problem is, in the case of an actual active-shooter or hostage situation, restraint is really the last thing you want them to show. If I was being held hostage, I know I would want the cops to shoot the guy holding me hostage at the first opportunity, ideally before he even knew they were there, because that minimizes the risk that I end up dead.
The real root cause is that it's somehow possible to place illegal calls, (to 911, telemarketing, and all sorts of other abuses,) where the telephone company can't verify the originator.
Of course, in most cases, it's quite difficult for law enforcement to ever track down whoever called in the hoax report, and it's rare for the callers to ever be caught -- though it does sometimes happen.
OK, that's kind of bizarre, considering the number of articles I've seen on here covering telephone tracking technologies. If police (or the phone company) can trace your phone when you're not even making a call, to try to find someone who may or may not be a criminal, how hard can it possibly be in the case of an actual call to go to the phone company with a warrant and say "this call came in to this 911 center at this time, and the caller committed a felony. Tell us where the phone is that that call came from"?
I couldn't agree more, cable dudes. So why don't you set the example? In the field of hardware and software, there's another special word that means the same thing as "secret": proprietary. Give up your proprietary systems and switch to an open standard, and we'll believe you don't tolerate harmful secrets.
Until then, just go away and let the adults talk in peace.
No, actually the name came from Maximilien Robespierre, the leader of the revolutionaries. He quite literally instituted a Reign of Terror and boasted of it!
WWI was started by Serbia and Austria-Hungary being unable to find a peaceful resolution to a political crisis precipitated by an assassination of an Austrian nobleman by a Yugoslav nationalist. How does France have anything to do with that?
Also, how does France (later) sending tons of soldiers to the killing fields reduce their population of smart people, when the best and brightest disproportionately tend to find ways to avoid serving on the front lines?
History shows that the French population is pretty good at revolutions - it may be time for another one.
History shows the French population is horrible at revolutions. They don't call the aftermath of the last one "The Reign of Terror" for nothing; it was one of the darkest points in the country's history.
Because never in the history of the English language has there been a word that had two or more distinct meanings, where the intended meaning could be easily discerned by contest... right?
If anyone ever tries to tell you remixes have no real value, tell them to go on YouTube sometime and search for "Mark Chesnutt Friends In Low Places". They'll find a rather stereotypical sad country song about a guy making an embarrassing social blunder and slinking away to drown his sorrows in whiskey and beer. It would never have been particularly noteworthy, if it hadn't drawn the attention of an up-and-coming artist by the name of Garth Brooks, who recorded a remix of it.
He kept the basic melody and lyrics exactly the same, but radically altered the tone of the song, turning it from a sad lament to an upbeat, rocking anthem. His version catapulted him to superstardom practically overnight, kickstarting a career that eventually made him the most successful singer in history, and changed the sound of country forever.
Garth Brooks's Friends In Low Places is considered one of the most culturally significant songs of all time, and it was a remix.
To be more clear, I'm talking about a system designed to disadvantage and discriminate against everyone except the people who run the system. The US financial system as presently constituted, for example.
Plenty of things. In most cases these days, if you dig beyond knee-jerk cries of "RACISM!!!" by attention whores and political opportunists, you'll find one of two things: a system set up to disadvantage and discriminate against pretty much everyone, reaching well beyond whichever minority the group that happens to notice first and thinks they're being targeted represents--as in the case presented here--or a person trying to hide actual, serious wrongdoing behind a narrative of victimhood and persecution. (The second form takes plenty of other forms as well. Bill Clinton's infamous "vast right-wing conspiracy" immediately comes to mind. Same basic principle, though.)
And who is imposing restrictions on the speech? No one's saying they can't show the movie because this is a place where they sell alcohol; they're imposing restrictions on the sale of alcohol, which is not in any way restricted speech.
I must be missing something. How does this have any First Amendment implications whatsoever, when the offending act is not showing a movie (protected speech) but serving alcohol (not protected speech) while showing the movie?
He's the obvious choice. He somehow managed to portray an IRS agent sympathetically in Stranger Than Fiction, so if anyone can pull this off, it would be him. :P
You're really starting to make your critics look right with a post like this. You keep writing up annoyed posts about how police who caught actual criminals without getting! warrant end up screwing up the court case because of it, and emphasizing how they need to get a warrant. You rail against warrantless searches of phones, and say they need to get a warrant. You mock cops who talk about the burden that getting a warrant places on them, saying how a warrant is a minimal hurdle to be cleared, and you say they need to get a warrant.
And now they got a warrant, and suddenly that's not good enough?
It's goalpost-rearranging posts like this that lead critics to believe that Techdirt actually has a broad, general anti-police, pro-criminal bias. Please don't give them more fuel for their arguments.
Exactly. This "bill" has satire written all over it. It's a bit disappointing to see the author unable to recognize that, treating it as if it were an actual attempt to pass an actual law! :(
On the post: The Cable Industry Is Absolutely Terrified Of Set Top Box Competition
Re: "contractual freedoms"
On the post: Congressional Rep Who Introduced Anti-Swatting Bill... Victim Of Attempted Swatting
Re: Re: Maybe a call back might help?
My first experience with a 911 call was one such time. (There have been two; the other one involved reporting a house fire I saw, which it turned out they were already aware of.)
Several years ago, I was working at the front desk at a local clinic, when one day some guy walked in. He was apparently drunk or high or something, less than completely coherent, and behaved very belligerently, to the point where we got worried enough that one of my coworkers called 911.
The dispatcher answered with "911, can you please hold?" And proceeded to put her on hold without even ascertaining the details of the situation first. By the time the dispatcher got back around to us a few minutes later, we had managed to defuse the situation ourselves and get the guy to leave, but it could easily have gone a very different way!
On the post: Beyond Open Access And Open Data: Open Science -- And No Patents
...and that's why this will fail. Genuine reciprocity is voluntary, not coerced. "Viral" is a very good term for the GPL: if you write a program that has 99 features yourself, but you need a GPL library to make the 100th feature work, it "infects" your entire codebase and forces you to GPL the entire thing, essentially claiming all your code for the GPL even though the writer of the code that infected it did nothing to earn it.
What Stallman's zealotry has been most "effective in propagating" is backlash against Free Software. By the 90s it had already gotten so bad that a bunch of the best and brightest developers around got together and formed the Open Source Initiative that was basically dedicated to the idea that "we're really not all as bad as those weirdos in the FSF." And their more moderate, non-coercive principles have proceeded to make a huge difference in the world since then. Today everyone knows what "open source" means, while the FSF are still essentially ignored and unknown outside of a very specific niche in the programming community.
And that's a real shame because they've done a lot of good work and come up with a lot of good ideas that deserve to be listened to. If only they hadn't gone with what's basically the worst possible way to implement their ideas, the world would probably be a noticeably better place today for it. I guess this is why we can't have nice things.
If MNI is trying to consciously imitate them, all I can say is plus ca change...
On the post: Congressional Rep Who Introduced Anti-Swatting Bill... Victim Of Attempted Swatting
Re: Re: That's not a root cause.
The real root cause is that it's somehow possible to place illegal calls, (to 911, telemarketing, and all sorts of other abuses,) where the telephone company can't verify the originator.
On the post: Congressional Rep Who Introduced Anti-Swatting Bill... Victim Of Attempted Swatting
OK, that's kind of bizarre, considering the number of articles I've seen on here covering telephone tracking technologies. If police (or the phone company) can trace your phone when you're not even making a call, to try to find someone who may or may not be a criminal, how hard can it possibly be in the case of an actual call to go to the phone company with a warrant and say "this call came in to this 911 center at this time, and the caller committed a felony. Tell us where the phone is that that call came from"?
On the post: The Cable Industry Is Absolutely Terrified Of Set Top Box Competition
I couldn't agree more, cable dudes. So why don't you set the example? In the field of hardware and software, there's another special word that means the same thing as "secret": proprietary. Give up your proprietary systems and switch to an open standard, and we'll believe you don't tolerate harmful secrets.
Until then, just go away and let the adults talk in peace.
On the post: French Politicians Pushing To Ban Linking To Any Website Without Permission
Re: Re: Re: Nuke 'em
On the post: French Politicians Pushing To Ban Linking To Any Website Without Permission
Re: *sigh* It's all Napoleon's fault.
WWI was started by Serbia and Austria-Hungary being unable to find a peaceful resolution to a political crisis precipitated by an assassination of an Austrian nobleman by a Yugoslav nationalist. How does France have anything to do with that?
Also, how does France (later) sending tons of soldiers to the killing fields reduce their population of smart people, when the best and brightest disproportionately tend to find ways to avoid serving on the front lines?
Nothing you just wrote up there makes any sense.
On the post: DHS Official Thinks People Should Have To Give Up Their Anonymity To Use The Internet
I can't help but wonder about this statement in light of Techdirt's enthusiastic support for municipal broadband...
On the post: French Politicians Pushing To Ban Linking To Any Website Without Permission
Re: Nuke 'em
History shows the French population is horrible at revolutions. They don't call the aftermath of the last one "The Reign of Terror" for nothing; it was one of the darkest points in the country's history.
On the post: Commerce Department Wants To Fix Some Of The Worst Problems Of Copyright Law: Reform Crazy Damages
Re: Re:
On the post: Commerce Department Wants To Fix Some Of The Worst Problems Of Copyright Law: Reform Crazy Damages
"Remixes have no value"
He kept the basic melody and lyrics exactly the same, but radically altered the tone of the song, turning it from a sad lament to an upbeat, rocking anthem. His version catapulted him to superstardom practically overnight, kickstarting a career that eventually made him the most successful singer in history, and changed the sound of country forever.
Garth Brooks's Friends In Low Places is considered one of the most culturally significant songs of all time, and it was a remix.
On the post: The Shittiness Of IP Law Has Taught The Public That Everything Is Stealing And Everyone Is Owed Something
Re: Re: Re: Copyright law is racist?
On the post: The Shittiness Of IP Law Has Taught The Public That Everything Is Stealing And Everyone Is Owed Something
Re: Copyright law is racist?
On the post: Courts Pretty Much OK With FBI's Occasional Stints As Child Porn Distributors
I really hope it's not the same guy!
On the post: Theater Sues State Police For Using State Liquor Laws To Walk All Over The First Amendment
Re: Re:
On the post: Theater Sues State Police For Using State Liquor Laws To Walk All Over The First Amendment
On the post: Released Documents Show NSA Actually Surprised To Find Itself Portrayed Negatively In Popular Culture
Re: Re: nsa: the movie
On the post: Comparing Cell Phones To Houses Not Exactly Deterring Use Of Generalized Warrants, Court Finds
And now they got a warrant, and suddenly that's not good enough?
It's goalpost-rearranging posts like this that lead critics to believe that Techdirt actually has a broad, general anti-police, pro-criminal bias. Please don't give them more fuel for their arguments.
On the post: South Carolina Politicians Propose Ridculous Plan To Register Journalists... To Make A Statement About Gun Control
Re:
Next >>