Valkor’s Techdirt Profile

valkor

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  • Apr 1st, 2013 @ 11:57am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: what is an illegal internet pharmacy????

    "So all your Oxy addicts and speed heads will have to get your codeine from other LEGAL Sources.."

    I figured it out.

    Oxy: potent overperscribed drug bogeyman. Pain reliever and depressant
    speed heads: dirtbag users of illegal stimulants
    codeine: cough syrup you can abuse if you're really, really desperate, just to group it all together

    "other LEGAL Sources...": Get with the program, slave! We have a great circle jerk going with the healthcare-industrial complex. Get your Oxy from a pharmacy, prescribed by your physician, paid for by your insurance company, supplied by pharmaceuticals, subsidized by government, protected by patent. We have ALL the good meds, just complain about your back a little more. Don't you dare get high without paying into our system!


    Wow, sorry about that. I think the American drug problem is complex, and needs to be approached in a very measured, rational way, but it's interesting to watch those with a vested interest in the system and status quo freak out when there's an alternative to playing their game.
  • Apr 1st, 2013 @ 10:35am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Obedient Big Box Stores

    That's the point of using other words.

    Abusive monopoly is illegal, but we often call a certain class of abusive monopoly "copyright".
    Theft is illegal, but we call a certain class of legalized theft "taxes". The only reason no one is punished is because we authorize them by proxy by re-electing those who impose them on us, thereby consenting.

    When that taxation is imposed without representation, people get mad. America isn't too far gone yet, but it's not looking good.
  • Apr 1st, 2013 @ 10:02am

    Re: Re: Re: what is an illegal internet pharmacy????

    I would think you are a troll, but you've put way too much effort into this thread.

    I would think you are mentally incapable, but you write lots of words that are, outside of the context, fairly coherent.

    You are either being deliberately obtuse, or you have a motive other than truth and justice.

    "All imported goods require proper customs and a "Bill of lading" or it's equivalent land based documentation"

    This is true. This document is generated by the shipping party (not the shipper).

    "It IS the responsibility of the original company (drug company) AND the transport/import company (UPS) to ensure these laws are upheld."

    First of all, "transport/import company" is not a thing. A freight company is not the importer. The company that owns and sells the object is the importer.

    http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/importer.html

    Second, your definitions suck. A court upholds a law. The responsibility of your drug company is to OBEY the law. The responsibility of an enforcement agency (law enforcement, DEA) is to enforce, or "ensure" as you say, the law. Again I say, UPS is not an enforcement agency!

    Finally, as far as I can tell, no discussion of importation is even relevant to the question! Nothing in the press release, agreement, or the Attachment A you cite often refer to shipments from foreign companies. The term "Internet pharmacy" is used often, but no one is located on "the internet". The only geographical location noted, in point 23 of your Attachment A, is the State of Florida. In the context of THIS case, please do not refer to "import" again. It has utterly nothing to do with UPS here.
  • Apr 1st, 2013 @ 9:10am

    Re: Re: Re: Prohibited by Law

    1. Establishes jurisdiction

    3.3 Citation of UPS policy document declaring intent not to break the law. This is a company policy, NOT ITSELF A LAW.

    4. Feds told UPS that bad people use UPS.

    5. Feds told UPS that bad people use UPS.

    6. UPS representative says "Our customers are not supposed to ship illegal things. That would be illegal for them to do."

    Still having a hard time finding laws that were clearly violated. I can see that the idea of someone not rendering "unwavering subservience", as DogBreath said elsewhere, to an actual employee of the DEA, a tentacle of the almighty FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, throws you into absolute panic. There is a difference between a suggestion and a law. Our country was founded on ideas about exercise of liberty, not begging permission from our superiors.
  • Mar 30th, 2013 @ 6:06am

    Re:

    No, the USPS has to be bankrupted. It's strongly protected against unwarranted search and seizure.
    UPS can be co-opted with things like non-prosecution agreements and national security letters, to give them color of law, or just with a warrantless wiretap style program.
  • Mar 30th, 2013 @ 6:01am

    Re: what is an illegal internet pharmacy????

    "you should know it is not legal to send post or parcels without disclosing the contents, and if the contents are illegal both the senders and the carriers are liable.
    And providing your id, and address details."

    Actually, that is not the case in the USA. Logically, how should a carrier be liable for contents that were never disclosed to them? The UPS is not an enforcement agency.

    "IF UPS is provided a list of clients who conduct illegal activities using UPS, and UPS does nothing about it, but knows those clients are using their service they are profiting from crime. And are complicit in that crime."

    America has this great thing called "rule of law" that we strive to live under. The goal is to keep the rules clear. To the best of my reading, none of the DOJ documents show that UPS was served an injunction against dealing with certain clients, nor do they show that UPS continued to do business with people after they were convicted of pharmacy drug crime. A request from a police department is neither a court order nor a law, and does not have the force of either. It may be immoral for a company to do business with a likely criminal, but it is not illegal. An accused criminal is not guilty until proven so.
  • Mar 30th, 2013 @ 5:29am

    Re: one problem

  • Mar 30th, 2013 @ 5:22am

    Re: Re: Re:

    Protectionism is economically inefficient, and generally harms the public by making goods more expensive, while benefiting a smaller group of producers.

    Protectionism is generally not good.
  • Mar 30th, 2013 @ 5:17am

    Re: Re: How does on know?

    "because it's a felony to post anything without providing who you are and what you are sending."

    Not in America.

    "So UPS is allowed to send parcels from anonymous posters ? and without any knowledge of the content of the parcel ?"

    Yes. UPS is not an enforcement agency.


    I'm terribly sorry to hear about your situation in Australia with the post office there. You don't have to accept the fact that the government treats you like a stupid slave.
  • Mar 30th, 2013 @ 5:08am

    Re: Re: Re: UPS just doesn't pick up the packages, Mike,

    Can you even read a thread?
    The ass-kicking comment was in reply to OOTB's rhetorical postulation of a doctor trying to treat a healthy person, not someone unconscious on a sidewalk.
  • Mar 30th, 2013 @ 5:04am

    Re: Prohibited by Law

    You keep saying that word. I do not think it means what you think it means...

    You do realize that the shipper in your added emphasis is actually the pharmacy or the middleman, not UPS, right? You do realize that the UPS Tariff/Terms and Conditions of Service document is an agreement between UPS and their customers, not an actual law, right?
  • Mar 30th, 2013 @ 4:58am

    Re:

    While that would be funny, section 12 of the Non-Prosecution Agreement specifically forbids UPS to consider the forfeiture a write-off.

    Every time I hear "non-prosecution agreement", a little part of my soul dies.
  • Mar 30th, 2013 @ 4:53am

    Re: Re: Re:

    That’s an interesting list of corporate actions describing an ambiguous relationship between UPS and pharmacies of uncertain validity, including a developing reticence to actually do business.

    Well, I’ll see your “undisputed facts” and raise you a “Non-Prosecution Agreement” The actual statement from the DEA is here:
    http://www.justice.gov/dea/divisions/sf/2013/sf032913.shtml
    and the agreement:
    http://www.justice.gov/dea/divisions/sf/2013/032913UPS.%20signedNPA.pdf

    Fact 1) UPS is giving 40 million to the government
    Fact 2) UPS is implementing an extra-judicial compliance policy at the dictate of the DEA
    Fact 3) UPS was threatened with charges of conspiracy, distribution of controlled substances, money laundering, and misbranding of pharmaceuticals.
    Fact 4) UPS must cooperate with the DEA to the extent of providing any document, record, or evidence at the mere request of the DEA.

    That’s not too unreasonable, really. Just give up 4th Amendment rights to search and seizure for all your customer and shipping information. Just give up 5th Amendment rights to due process of law for deprivation of $40 million of property. It’s a small price to pay for the heinous crime of dealing with pharmacies that were ALLEGEDLY criminal.

    UPS did not do business with a criminal enterprise. Once the pharmacy was shut down, UPS did not do business with it anymore. UPS had a tariff contract, essentially a Terms of Service agreement, to not ship illegal materials through UPS, but the pharmacies were the ones violating that agreement. Sure, delivering packages to parking lots and roadsides may be a bad idea and a bad business practice, but it is not illegal.

    Now, I may get all warm and fuzzy when I hear words like “good corporate citizen”, “voluntary”, “compliance”, “materially assist” and other newspeak, but then I realize that UPS has simply been conscripted by the DOJ and DEA. Remember the cooperation provision? Those “request(ed)” documents may be shared to ANY agency, at the discretion of the DEA. Remember the “forfeit” of cash by UPS? The civil forfeiture rules of the DEA are beyond screwed up, as shown by their attempt to seize the Hotel Caswell:
    http://ij.org/massachusetts-civil-forfeiture-release-1-24-2013
    I would say they seize first and ask questions later, but that might be giving them too much grace. The DEA could have seized the money from UPS even if UPS hadn’t agreed to let it be seized in an NPA. I can almost imagine a couple of pin-striped, neckless goombas walking into the UPS office and saying “Nice company you got here, shame if anything happened to it. For $40 million we can protect you from some... unpleasant... legal trouble.

    The tech angle: Illicit commerce over the internet involves third parties in non-criminal ways, who then roll over to avoid trouble, and allow the Constitution to be totally mocked. Thanks, internet.
  • Mar 8th, 2013 @ 6:35pm

    (untitled comment)

    One of my first papers in college was a discussion of a California ballot proposition. I chose one regarding a ban on horse slaughter for human consumption. I thought it a ridiculous infringement on the liberty of a person to eat any damn thing he pleased, barring endangered species and situations of animal cruelty, and thought the very idea of a ban preposterous. I thought there was no practical difference between a cow and a horse.

    Sadly, 60% of my fellow Californians disagreed.
    http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/California_Proposition_6,_Prohibition_on_Slaughter_of_Horses _for_Human_Consumption_(1998)
  • Mar 8th, 2013 @ 6:22pm

    Re:

    How many citizens' voices does it take to counter balance one law enforcement official? If a thousand constituents said NO for every LEO that said Yes, would your rep listen to the constituents? Do we elect representatives or rulers? Congress ignores us only because we let them get away with it.
  • Mar 8th, 2013 @ 5:03pm

    Re:

    Same here. Starting with the demo first, but if it's really the good crack, I'm done for.
  • Mar 8th, 2013 @ 4:33pm

    (untitled comment)

    For the love of the Republic, E-mail your Representative about HR 983, this bill. Remind them that they swore an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, not the FBI, CIA, or Keystone Cops.
  • Mar 8th, 2013 @ 4:15pm

    Re:

    "This happens with every major game that's online-only upon release. Every. Damn. Game. Why is this surprising anyone?"

    Yes, we know that online game companies (Blizzard, that's you) are notorious for not being willing/able to ramp up server capacity to handle a launch day peak that will probably not be matched for a long time. The point is that Sim City DID NOT HAVE TO BE THAT WAY! Even Ubisoft, who ostensibly has abandoned always-on DRM, did not require a crippling amount of server interaction with a healthy connection.

    If the DRM on your single player game is so intrusive it brings down YOUR servers at launch, you're doing it wrong.
  • Mar 8th, 2013 @ 4:06pm

    Re: Finally

    They're not working in our interest primarily.

    "Ambition must be made to counteract ambition."
    -James Madison, Federalist 51

    Madison was talking about tension between different branches of government, but the principle is still the same. When one faction in power has the ability to obstruct another faction, it is more likely (not always) that the final action will be more aligned with the rule of law and the will of the people. Single parties (of any sort) have a terrible tendency to steamroll through policies that favor narrow, usually selfish, interests.
  • Feb 23rd, 2013 @ 8:22pm

    Re:

    I think he's saying that he doesn't speak French, or maybe that he is not French.

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