Hm... It's really easy for that kid to not get arrested: resign from the job which requires you to sexually assault innocent travelers. I don't understand this exoneration of TSA agents. They may not make the policy but they do implement it and if they were vaguely moral individuals they would resign and go find another job that does not involve sexually assaulting people. Yes it can be tough to find a job, but that does not excuse sexual assault.
"Should local TSA employees be made to pay for the policies set in Washington and be prosecuted as sex offenders?"
Actually no. They would be prosecuted for their own actions. AFAIK the Feds aren't holding a gun to anyone's head telling them to perform sexually intrusive searches. The fact that your boss tells you to do something does not absolve you of its legal consequences and it definitely does not absolve you of moral responsibility for your actions. I say we should toss the TSA agents in jail and generally treat them like sex offenders. I'd like to see the viability of the TSA recruitment when their agents are universally reviled.
That PLA (Public Lying Announcement) is disgustingly good. I learned that rich white guys are assholes and young attractive black women are good people. Also, sound technician are old depressed women. I'm assuming their employers must be treating them poorly!
Somebody needs to re-dub the video with different dialog. I would do it but it's not my area of expertise.
There are a large number of theories as to the reasons why a state might decide to sign a non-binding international agreement. (Otherwise known as any international agreement since there are no international cops that can force your country to comply with the agreements it signed) One of the big ones I remember is specifically to bind future governments. The basic idea is that if you break the agreements made by your predecessors, you are taking the risk that when your predecessors become your successors (when the other party gains back control basically) they will repudiate agreements that you made in retaliation. That makes it harder for you to make agreements with those whom you want to open trade relations or ally as those potential partners realize your domestic political situation might make the agreement a short-lived one. So, you leave the agreements of your predecessors alone and pile one extra ones so that when they come back to power, they are now bound by other agreements. Basically, ACTA is just another way to make sure IP maximalists will continue to get their way in the future.
I never realized that I have "succumbed to the tyranny of novelty." Every day, I write short comments on blog posts hoping to add to the conversation by bringing in a new idea. Every day, I write little bits and pieces of new software that hopefully will help me solve a new problem. I even once went to a hackathon (which should be renamed a "tyranny event" I guess) where several of us attempted to add new features to a variety of humanitarian open source projects. What I had not realized is that while I thought I was spending time enjoying myself and doing things I love, I was actually the victim of a tyranny and I was deeply distraught. From now on, I will only regurgitate ideas that others have brought up before me. I will refuse to write code that does something that has never been done before. I will make a stand and never again will I ever do something new!
"Actually you would have the opposite effect. Since national banks can pump money into the economy on a whim and BitCoins inflation is all predefined. You would more than likely have deflation. More goods for the same amount of BitCoins. If it really took of this effect would be amplified as more money poured into BitCoin. And like all good feedback loops it could cause a financial collapse that would be outside any central banks control."
Financial collapse due to deflation? Deflation is purely a monetary phenomena and it would be irrelevant to the real economy. Especially given the architecture of BitCoins where money production really is a helicopter drop rather than the current system where the money flows in rather odd ways to different parts of the system.
"One huge thing the creators of this have not taken into account. If this does take off they are going to need a method to "Split" BitCoins into multiple coins and devalue them based on the Split. I mean you do not want to be walking around with a dozen BitCoins each worth as much as a share of Berkshire Hathaway"
That is unnecessary actually. While it is common for the store of value and the medium of exchange to be one and the same, that is unnecessary. If BitCoins start having a very high value we will deposit them in banks which will issue notes that are redeemable for fractions of BitCoins. The bank can relatively easily split its notes without changing your holdings.
Mike, I am worried about you developing RSI. I highly suggest you create a keyboard shortcut for "X is claiming that Y induces infringement". That should cut down on the typing you do significantly. Alternatively, we could lobby for a new HTML tag which could be expanded to "X is an evil pirate who is being taken down by Y" by IE or expanded to "Y is full of shit" by Firefox.
Put it in your luggage when you fly. When you go through security, explain to the TSA that you're pretty sure it's not a bomb since the police gave it to you.
I agree this is clearly trespass. A random citizen would not be allowed to place a device on your car without your consent, I don't see why the police should have that right without judicial oversight.
The issue isn't really the technology. The issue is what they are doing with it. If they want to follow me, fine. If they want to build an automated who can follow me, fine. But if the cops hide in my trunk or ask if they can sit in my passenger seat, that is different. Furthermore, it appears that removing the device may be prosecutable. That is absurd. It's the equivalent of the cop hiding in my trunk. I find him, tell him to get the hell out of there and then he charges me.
I think this is a little more complicated than you make it out to be Mike. Your privacy rights don't have much to do with whether you have protected your data but more about your reasonable expectations. Protecting your data just allows you to more easily prove your expectation of privacy. An uneducated computer user (most people) probably does not understand how their wifi works and they probably don't understand concepts such as packet-sniffing. Their assumption is most likely that their data will remain private unless some "hacker" "steals" it. So their expectation of privacy is not the same as if they were using a radio transmitter to broadcast their conversations over the FM band, or talking loudly in public. If I forget to turn on encryption, that does not mean I intend to share my emails with you.
On the other hand, the mens rea of the listener should matter a lot too. In this case, Google did not intend to store that information and deleted it as soon as it found out. Their intention was obviously NOT to wiretap and therefore it makes sense for them to not be guilty of any offense. Had they intended to capture that information and use it, that would be a whole different ball of wax.
The issue is not whether Google knew that what it was doing was legal or not. It is more whether Google knew what it was doing. And in this case, the evidence seems to be they didn't realize they were capturing private information.
I don't think that allowing someone to copyright a single word is inherently more absurd than copyright law. The court was quite clear that it would allow such a think to happen only in exceptional circumstances. If copyright makes any sense at all, the bar needs to be a certain level of creativity of the content that would need to be encouraged, not the volume of the content. I think the court took the right approach of saying something along the lines of: "This piece of 1-word content was clearly not creative enough to warrant copyright. We seriously doubt that someone is going to come up with 1-word content that will be creative enough. But if someone does manage to pack enough creativity into a single word, well, that's what copyright was meant to encourage."
I'm filing a class action suite against all of you Anonymous Cowards. With you lawsuit you are unjustly enriching yourselves from the hard work of us pseudonymous commenters who are the real driving force behind this website. If it wasn't for us pseudonymous commenters coming to this website, Mike would have felt a lesser connection to his fans which means he would have written less which would have caused ACs to comment less and therefore have a weaker claim against him. It is us pseudonymous bloggers who deserve to sue Mike more! You're just freeloaders and if you keep going the American corn growers' puppies are going to die from counterfeit music-therapy!
There is no ethically honest argument in favor of retroactive copyright extension.
As much as I hate retroactive copyright, I think this is no longer true. People can today have a reasonable expectation that copyright terms will be extended retroactively in the future. Therefore, it could be acting as an incentive to produce copyrighted works.
On the post: Texas Legislature Looks To Make TSA Groping Procedures Illegal
Re:
On the post: Texas Legislature Looks To Make TSA Groping Procedures Illegal
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Hmmm
Actually no. They would be prosecuted for their own actions. AFAIK the Feds aren't holding a gun to anyone's head telling them to perform sexually intrusive searches. The fact that your boss tells you to do something does not absolve you of its legal consequences and it definitely does not absolve you of moral responsibility for your actions. I say we should toss the TSA agents in jail and generally treat them like sex offenders. I'd like to see the viability of the TSA recruitment when their agents are universally reviled.
On the post: Things Get Worse And Worse For Sony As Another Massive Data Breach Detected
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Instead Of Hiring Film Crew To Make PSA About Out Of Work Film Crews, ICE Just Reruns Someone Else's Video
Somebody needs to re-dub the video with different dialog. I would do it but it's not my area of expertise.
On the post: CRS Report Withheld By USTR Confirms That ACTA Language Is Quite Questionable
On the post: You Shouldn't Need An Excuse For Having Fun & Creating Something
On the post: Can Bitcoin Really Succeed Long Term?
Re: Re: Re: Re: currency
Financial collapse due to deflation? Deflation is purely a monetary phenomena and it would be irrelevant to the real economy. Especially given the architecture of BitCoins where money production really is a helicopter drop rather than the current system where the money flows in rather odd ways to different parts of the system.
"One huge thing the creators of this have not taken into account. If this does take off they are going to need a method to "Split" BitCoins into multiple coins and devalue them based on the Split. I mean you do not want to be walking around with a dozen BitCoins each worth as much as a share of Berkshire Hathaway"
That is unnecessary actually. While it is common for the store of value and the medium of exchange to be one and the same, that is unnecessary. If BitCoins start having a very high value we will deposit them in banks which will issue notes that are redeemable for fractions of BitCoins. The bank can relatively easily split its notes without changing your holdings.
On the post: Can Bitcoin Really Succeed Long Term?
On the post: Grooveshark Insists It's Legal; Points Out That Using DMCA Safe Harbors Is Not Illegal
On the post: Feds Tell Supreme Court They Should Be Able To Stick A GPS Device On Your Car Without A Warrant
Re: It's Vandalism.
Or put it on a shipping vessel.
So many pranks!
On the post: Feds Tell Supreme Court They Should Be Able To Stick A GPS Device On Your Car Without A Warrant
Re: Re:
On the post: Feds Tell Supreme Court They Should Be Able To Stick A GPS Device On Your Car Without A Warrant
Re: But they are modifying MY vehicle
On the post: Feds Tell Supreme Court They Should Be Able To Stick A GPS Device On Your Car Without A Warrant
Re: Re:
On the post: Judge In Google WiFiSpy Case Trying To Determine If Packet Sniffing Open Networks Is An Illegal Wiretap
On the other hand, the mens rea of the listener should matter a lot too. In this case, Google did not intend to store that information and deleted it as soon as it found out. Their intention was obviously NOT to wiretap and therefore it makes sense for them to not be guilty of any offense. Had they intended to capture that information and use it, that would be a whole different ball of wax.
The issue is not whether Google knew that what it was doing was legal or not. It is more whether Google knew what it was doing. And in this case, the evidence seems to be they didn't realize they were capturing private information.
On the post: How Does Guinness Figure Out The World's Most Prolific Blogger?
Re: Re: Re: What is a "Blog"?
On the post: Can You Copyright A Single Word?
On the post: Perfect 10's Latest Bizarre Arguments Against Google Heard By Skeptical Appeals Court
On the post: Guy Who Claims He Owns 84% Of Facebook Refiles Lawsuit
On the post: Dumbest Lawsuit Ever? HuffPo Sued By Bloggers Who Agreed To Work For Free... But Now Claim They Were Slaves
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On the post: Denmark Reverses Position On Copyright Extension, May Impact All Of Europe
As much as I hate retroactive copyright, I think this is no longer true. People can today have a reasonable expectation that copyright terms will be extended retroactively in the future. Therefore, it could be acting as an incentive to produce copyrighted works.
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