Look around you and see how many commonplace things in your day-to-day life, including your modern clothing and diet, would have been considered miraculous just 200 years ago.
Yes, but now your example is just getting silly. As a general rule, the smaller a group is, the less people there are who are going to have a problem with them for whatever reason. If there really was a restaurant who didn't want to serve "people named John Smith," I'd find it highly unlikely that there would be even one other restaurant in the same city whose owner holds the same bias, which means that the impact on John Smith's choices is minimal even without a new place having to open up to cater to him.
You could extend that argument to basically any form of "consumer protection" legislation. "So BigBad Pharmacy Co sells drugs that kill 9 users out of 10, enough of their relatives will give them bad reviews on yelp and they'll be forced to stop".
...which is why, in my comment, I clearly distinguished between hurt feelings and real harm, and stated that real harm needs to be held to a much higher standard. But if a restaurant owner wants to say "we don't serve your kind here," fine. Let him. Because what's going to happen is, the guy down the street will open up a restaurant that caters to "your kind," and make a ton of money off their business, even if they're a small minority, due to the Long Tail effect.
False analogy. Apartheid and Jim Crow were both government-enforced discrimination, where if a business owner had thought there was nothing wrong with the people being discriminated against, and wanted to treat them equally to everyone else, he'd have been breaking the law. Anti-discrimination laws raise exactly the same problem, just in the opposite direction. Forcing someone to violate their conscience in the name of "not hurting someone's feelings" is something that should never be tolerated in a free society. That's far more in contradiction to our founding ideals!
My first job out of high school was at a Wendy's. There was one college-age girl who was a regular customer, who would frequently come in and behave in disruptive ways, annoying other customers. After a while, the store manager decided enough was enough, and he told her that she was no longer welcome, period, and that if she ever came back he would call the cops on her.
She never came back. If she had, he would have been completely within his rights to have her arrested for trespassing, even though it was a business open to the general public. This was without a doubt an act of discrimination on his part, saying "we will serve customers here, but not you," but I don't think any reasonable person would find fault with it. Freedom of association, including the freedom to refuse to do business with a person, is protected by the First Amendment.
The problem with laws against discrimination is that they get "a foot in the door." Once precedent is established to prohibit the exercise of one's First Amendment right to freedom of association by prohibiting discrimination based on X, it's that much easier to then turn around and pass a new law to limit this right again, by prohibiting discrimination based on Y, and then another that prohibits discrimination based on Z. Considering how often we see articles here on Techdirt about someone dragging someone into court for a "crime" that boils down to "he hurt my feelings," it's not at all inconceivable that some future anti-discrimination law could prohibit the exercise of freedom of association based on discrimination against people being obnoxious, for fear of hurting the obnoxious person's feelings.
And I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't want to live in a world where the law would have been on her side in the hypothetical situation where the manager called the cops on her.
It's important to remember that businesses exist for the purpose of making money. The immediate effect of not doing business with someone is that you don't get their money. The second-order effect of not doing business with someone is that you could get a reputation for it, which could potentially drive away customers that you otherwise would have done business with, and then you don't get their money either. So think about that for a second.
If someone who is in business to make money feels so strongly about a potential customer that they are willing to put themselves in that position, for whatever reason, why should the law take that away from them? As long as their refusal do do business with this person does not directly cause harm to them, (note: basic needs and emergency services, such as hospitals, police and fire protection, etc. need to be held to a much higher standard,) the only true problem posed by discrimination is "felony interference with self-esteem." Which, just like "felony interference with a business model," is a ridiculous thing to make a real crime.
I still don't get how that "filing a suit without the knowledge of the plaintiff" bit worked.
Let's say I'm a lawyer. If I showed up in court and said "I'm here on behalf of Initrode Inc., to bring suit against Contoso Inc. for violating X, Y, and Z," and then someone from Initrode showed up and said "hey, that guy's not our lawyer and he never was," wouldn't that be a real good way to get myself into some real serious trouble?
“Does it instruct you to withhold evidence from the state’s attorney and the circuit court of Baltimore city, even if upon order to produce?” asked defense attorney Joshua Insley.
“Yes,” Cabreja replied, saying he spoke with the FBI last week about the case.
This is the thing that mystifies me about all this.
An NDA is a contract. How can anyone--and particularly an expert whose professional specialty is the law--think that a contract between two specific parties can somehow trump a generally-applicable law? And more specifically, how can anyone think that a contract can trump obligations to a court, when a court's authority is obviously greater by the simple fact that a court has the power to declare a contract unenforceable?
Tail: Listen up, Dog! No matter how big you grow, or how insignificant I become in relation to the rest of you, you will be wagged by me whenever and however I want! Is that clear, Dog?
In February of last year, Pedro Rivera overheard a police scanner call for respondents to a serious traffic accident in Hartford, Connecticut. Rivera, a cameraman for a local news station, headed to the crash site and attempted to gather footage using his personal drone.
...
The district court also went out of its way to note that, had Rivera even been in a jurisdiction which protected the right to film police activity, he may have fallen outside the scope of those protections. He wasn't standing by with a camcorder, after all, but sending "a flying object into a police-restricted area ... effectively trespassing onto an active crime scene."
Am I missing something here? Since when is the site of a traffic accident "an active crime scene"? Seems to me this fails on two points: it's not "active" because it happened in the past and now it's done happening, and it's not "a crime scene" because it's an accident. (Unless they're using "accident" in the colloquial sense and it was actually a road rage incident or something similar?)
It's a perfectly legitimate term, referring to a sexual predator carefully preparing their (usually underage) target over time to become a "willing" sexual partner. It's very creepy stuff, and if it weren't for the sexual-predator dimension, it would probably be referred to as "brainwashing".
...which is great, right up until the first time some petulant kid decides to run away and uses this card to get a lot further than they should. Then just watch what happens.
Exactly. Right now, regulators are asking "should Comcast be allowed to merge with TWC?" Those of us living in the real world are asking "why are they even considering that question in the first place, rather than whether or not Comcast should be broken up as an abusive monopolist?"
On the post: US Patent Office Gamed The System To Make Sure Patent 9 Million Wasn't A Crazy Troll Patent
Now when it gets to 10,000,000, that'll be a big deal!
On the post: Philly PD Declares All Drivers To Be 'Under Investigation' While Denying Request For License Plate Reader Data
Re: Re: taken to the logical conclusion
On the post: DailyDirt: Life's Little Problems In Space
Re: Yeah, just "a few problems to solve".
...says the guy on the Internet.
Look around you and see how many commonplace things in your day-to-day life, including your modern clothing and diet, would have been considered miraculous just 200 years ago.
On the post: Philly PD Declares All Drivers To Be 'Under Investigation' While Denying Request For License Plate Reader Data
Assault and batteries?
On the post: Would It Have Been Better To Let The Indiana Religious Freedom Law Stand And Let The Internet And Free Market Work?
Re: Re: Re: Prevention versus cure
On the post: Would It Have Been Better To Let The Indiana Religious Freedom Law Stand And Let The Internet And Free Market Work?
Re: Prevention versus cure
...which is why, in my comment, I clearly distinguished between hurt feelings and real harm, and stated that real harm needs to be held to a much higher standard. But if a restaurant owner wants to say "we don't serve your kind here," fine. Let him. Because what's going to happen is, the guy down the street will open up a restaurant that caters to "your kind," and make a ton of money off their business, even if they're a small minority, due to the Long Tail effect.
On the post: Would It Have Been Better To Let The Indiana Religious Freedom Law Stand And Let The Internet And Free Market Work?
Re: Historical amnesia.
On the post: Would It Have Been Better To Let The Indiana Religious Freedom Law Stand And Let The Internet And Free Market Work?
She never came back. If she had, he would have been completely within his rights to have her arrested for trespassing, even though it was a business open to the general public. This was without a doubt an act of discrimination on his part, saying "we will serve customers here, but not you," but I don't think any reasonable person would find fault with it. Freedom of association, including the freedom to refuse to do business with a person, is protected by the First Amendment.
The problem with laws against discrimination is that they get "a foot in the door." Once precedent is established to prohibit the exercise of one's First Amendment right to freedom of association by prohibiting discrimination based on X, it's that much easier to then turn around and pass a new law to limit this right again, by prohibiting discrimination based on Y, and then another that prohibits discrimination based on Z. Considering how often we see articles here on Techdirt about someone dragging someone into court for a "crime" that boils down to "he hurt my feelings," it's not at all inconceivable that some future anti-discrimination law could prohibit the exercise of freedom of association based on discrimination against people being obnoxious, for fear of hurting the obnoxious person's feelings.
And I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't want to live in a world where the law would have been on her side in the hypothetical situation where the manager called the cops on her.
It's important to remember that businesses exist for the purpose of making money. The immediate effect of not doing business with someone is that you don't get their money. The second-order effect of not doing business with someone is that you could get a reputation for it, which could potentially drive away customers that you otherwise would have done business with, and then you don't get their money either. So think about that for a second.
If someone who is in business to make money feels so strongly about a potential customer that they are willing to put themselves in that position, for whatever reason, why should the law take that away from them? As long as their refusal do do business with this person does not directly cause harm to them, (note: basic needs and emergency services, such as hospitals, police and fire protection, etc. need to be held to a much higher standard,) the only true problem posed by discrimination is "felony interference with self-esteem." Which, just like "felony interference with a business model," is a ridiculous thing to make a real crime.
On the post: Former Prenda Lawyer Hit With A $50,000 Counterclaim In ADA Shakedown Lawsuit
Let's say I'm a lawyer. If I showed up in court and said "I'm here on behalf of Initrode Inc., to bring suit against Contoso Inc. for violating X, Y, and Z," and then someone from Initrode showed up and said "hey, that guy's not our lawyer and he never was," wouldn't that be a real good way to get myself into some real serious trouble?
On the post: Baltimore PD Has Deployed Stingray Devices Over 4,300 Times, Instructed By FBI To Withhold Info From Courts
This is the thing that mystifies me about all this.
An NDA is a contract. How can anyone--and particularly an expert whose professional specialty is the law--think that a contract between two specific parties can somehow trump a generally-applicable law? And more specifically, how can anyone think that a contract can trump obligations to a court, when a court's authority is obviously greater by the simple fact that a court has the power to declare a contract unenforceable?
On the post: Big Media Companies Insist That VPN Services Violate Copyright Law
On the post: District Court Says You Can (Probably) Photograph Police, But Only With A Regular Camera, Not A Drone
Am I missing something here? Since when is the site of a traffic accident "an active crime scene"? Seems to me this fails on two points: it's not "active" because it happened in the past and now it's done happening, and it's not "a crime scene" because it's an accident. (Unless they're using "accident" in the colloquial sense and it was actually a road rage incident or something similar?)
On the post: Turns Out Feds Actually Tracked Most International Calls For Nearly A Decade Before 9/11 -- Didn't Stop The Attack
Where? (Link appears to be missing.)
On the post: Revenge Porn Site Owner Kevin Bollaert Sentenced To 18 Years In Prison
Considering how the passage of years has shown what a disaster that was, you'd think Steinbaugh could find a better choice of words...
On the post: UK School District To Report On Parents Allowing Kids To Play More Mature Video Games
Re: WTF is "Sexual Grooming"?
On the post: 'Mob' Detains, Threatens Photographers Because Single Adults Are Probably All Pedophiles
Re: Re:
This is why we can't have nice things.
On the post: Unpatentable Vegetables Are Now Patentable In Europe
Re: Re: Re:
On the post: AT&T Shows Cupertino Precisely What Broadband Competition (Or The Lack Thereof) Looks Like
Re:
On the post: Comcast, CenturyLink Give New Home Owner Kafka-esque Introduction To U.S. Broadband Market
Re:
On the post: Subway, McDonald's And Burger King Sued Over GPS Tracking Patent... Or Something
Re: I 100% Agree, But...
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