I used to help teach a self-defense course for kids which had a "reacting to inappropriate sexual touching by adults" segment. It involved starting out by trying to vocally deter your assailant while calling for help. Then, the children were taught to go for the assailant's groin or face and try to run away. (Obviously the idea was more to hope to startle the attacker into backing off just long enough for the kid to run for help.) For many of the kids, this largely served to reassure parents as the kids were too timid to be likely to act. (And let's face it, before the TSA turned pedophile, the chances of a child being sexually assaulted were minuscule) But there were a couple of the kids whose reaction I would really like to see if they were to go through TSA. I mean, what would the TSA agents do if a 6 years old was to try to gouge out their eyes during the pat down? On second thought, maybe I don't want to see that. The assholes would probably taser/shoot the kid.
I definitely think this is not censorship. Think about it. Censorship is when someone is prevented from saying something. If Facebook prohibits content from their service, the content and ideas are not censored. They can still appear in other places and in other formats. Facebook is simply choosing not to display something they don't want to display.
I think that companies calling these kinds of things a mistake is much more honest than many people seem to believe. Remember that in companies the size of Facebook, there are many people with varying degrees of influence and power who all have a different idea of the approach the company should have to anything ranging from the bathroom cleaning schedule to the capital structure. Even when there are policies in place they often must leave much to interpretation or the whole organization grinds to a halt.
So in that context, is it a mistake for Mr. Joe Facebook Administrator to delete the page of some guy who is being a jerk? No, he probably did it intentionally according to his potentially valid understanding of Facebook's policy. But what about for the organization as a whole? You bet it's a mistake. They want to keep things on Facebook bellow the lawsuit level and reduce the incentives for the feds to bust down the door and create new regulation, but they don't want to kick off every jerk out there. It's the same thing as when in the morning you accidentally pour yourself a glass of milk and pour the orange juice in the cereal. (That not just me right?) You have a process that works pretty well most of the time but every once in a while, for one reason or another things are a little bit different and everything goes wrong. That sounds like a mistake to me.
OK, to be fair, this just allows the lawsuit to go ahead and we don't know what the court ruled on. If the supreme court ruled at this stage of the case it was probably on a technical issue that was far removed from the merits.
I have been thinking on the having-to-pee-makes-you-smart article and wondering what bugged me about it. Well, it's the fact that they tried a whole bunch of different scenarios and only the having to pee scenario gave significant results. I wonder if they accounted for the other experiments failing: http://xkcd.com/882/
Quite honestly, I would rate these guy's antics as about on the same danger level as toddlers. I mean, if the airport was busy, they could potentially have slightly injured someone, but overall, I'm not sure wheelchair races are a security threat. I think this is definitely a case of security reacting very appropriately. Though probably not for the right reasons. But hey... Beggars can't be choosers.
Well, if you keep 1/2 million dollars in cash in your house, and somebody breaks in and takes the money, you can't magically wave your hand and get it back. Security is one of the reasons why we put our money in banks and it's the same thing with bitcoins.
I don't think this is absurd within the context. The entirety of copyright as it is today is an absurdity designed so as to give more control and more ownership to some sort of a Platonic ideal of a creator. This decision would give copyright holders even more control. Imagine a fair use collage. The collage didn't include the copyright information so now we have a DMCA violation even though the collage is otherwise legal. This is a barrier to fair use and requires you get permission from the copyright holder in more cases. This is just copyright being consistent with its own inherent absurdity. Nothing absurd about that.
As much as I don't like this, I can see it making some amount of sense. If Righthaven doesn't have standing, this does not mean that someone else does not. In fact, the real copyright holders most definitely have standing. So it could very well be that those people could sue Righthaven only to be hit by the real copyright holders. (Unless there is some sort of rule basically punishing the copyright holder for trying to sell its right to sue) On the other hand, if that is the case, the settlements only bind Righthaven and those who settled. That means the original copyright holder can sue whether the settlements are vacated or not. Unless of course, Righthaven's plan is to properly acquire the copyright and not just the right to sue.
Hey Mike! Stop being a jerk. How would you like it if I told your children that Santa Claus doesn't exist? If the government wants to believe that those documents are secret, it's a magical thing that should be cherished. They will learn the truth when they are old enough.
I think the blame rests squarely on those who have given us this weird idea that jobs are a resource that must be shared as opposed to being voluntary exchanges which make both parties better off. If only we could shake off this absurd concept, there are a lot of stupid laws that would disappear and a lot of people would be better off.
I don't understand why you would want to institute a fee for immigration. What is the advantage of that?
Also, I don't think minimum wage laws would be worst with open borders. If potential immigrants see large amounts of unemployment because of the minimum wage, they are likely to not want to come here.
I know... The fact that they have no capital goods, no infrastructure and no education system has nothing to do with their current standards of living. Of course population growth is not enough. Nobody here said it was. All that I said is that people are a resource because they are a factor of production. (The other two being land and capital) Having more resources available is a Good Thing. Kicking resources out is a Bad Thing.
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Re: Re: What does it matter? Its gone anyway.
On the post: Facebook, Roger Ebert And The Pointlessness Of The Jerk Patrol
So in that context, is it a mistake for Mr. Joe Facebook Administrator to delete the page of some guy who is being a jerk? No, he probably did it intentionally according to his potentially valid understanding of Facebook's policy. But what about for the organization as a whole? You bet it's a mistake. They want to keep things on Facebook bellow the lawsuit level and reduce the incentives for the feds to bust down the door and create new regulation, but they don't want to kick off every jerk out there. It's the same thing as when in the morning you accidentally pour yourself a glass of milk and pour the orange juice in the cereal. (That not just me right?) You have a process that works pretty well most of the time but every once in a while, for one reason or another things are a little bit different and everything goes wrong. That sounds like a mistake to me.
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A live lawyer.
On the post: DannyB's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
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On the post: Tonight On Security Theater: After Hours Airport Antics Expose Security Tunnel Vision
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On the post: Those Who Settled With Righthaven Consider Taking Action; Righthaven Threatens Them With More Suits
On the post: ACLU Drags The State Department To Court For Its Failure To Declassify Publicly Available Documents
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On the post: ACLU Drags The State Department To Court For Its Failure To Declassify Publicly Available Documents
On the post: Lofgren Introducing Bill To Revamp Immigration For Entrepreneurs & Skilled Workers
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Re: Seriously... WTF?!
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Re: Re: It is time for real immigration reform
Also, I don't think minimum wage laws would be worst with open borders. If potential immigrants see large amounts of unemployment because of the minimum wage, they are likely to not want to come here.
On the post: Lofgren Introducing Bill To Revamp Immigration For Entrepreneurs & Skilled Workers
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On the post: ICE Stalling On More FOIA Requests Concerning Domain Name Seizures
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