One of the reasons, I think, that copyright is so screwed up is that the thing that it is actually attempting to regulate, and the thing the regulations directly affect, are not the same.

Copyright isn't actually about the thing being copyrighted. After a work has been created, is an abundant good - but the problem is, this ignores the part of the process that is not abundant. By the same logic, cars are an abundant good - the raw materials to duplicate them are (considering the volume of the earth) nigh-inexhaustible, if you ignore the energy sunk retrieving and refining said raw materials.

Similarly, people's time is not an abundant good. And the purpose of copyright is to regulate this non-abundant good: It's to create an incentive for people to spend their time in creative endeavors.

Things get weird, because to do this, the law cracked down on the duplication of legally-protected information. This worked just fine for hundreds of years, because you needed large and expensive machinery to duplicate in any significant way. It's not working nearly as well anymore. But attempting to protect information was never the goal, it was always a means to an end.

Two things: One, I agree with Shieldw0lf. Two, consider this: If these kids receive a crappy education, the course of their lives is negatively impacted. Most criminals are poorly educated. Most poorly educated people make crappy salaries compared to their more well-educated counterparts. A poor education system drags all of society down with it, in the form of crime rates and economic woes.

It's just that the problems caused by it don't set in until years after the fact. And even then it's too easy to simply blame the damage caused by this on the way the people affected chose to play the crappy hand they were dealt (ignoring the fact that the hands were crappy, so of course they were going to perform badly).

Virii is the plural for computer virus. And viruses is another. Take your pick, they're both perfectly good words. One might be much less common than the other, but anyone immediately knows what is meant by either of the two, and both are in wide enough use to be instantly recognized by most people. Therefore virii is a word, and continuing to insist that it ain't is exactly like the stubborn insistence only a few decades ago that ain't wasn't a word either. Irregardless is a word, now, as well, despite its highly annoying etymology.

Similarly, "begs the question" has changed meanings. I don't even know what the original meaning was supposed to be, and I have never in my entire life ever heard or read it used in that sense, other than on this website. Its original meaning is well on its way to gaining the archaic classification, and I'm sorry, but when you so self-righteously flame someone else for "incorrectly" using it, all that happens is I think you're more interested in making yourself feel superior than in contributing to the discussion.

Now I'd better go put on my asbestos suit ...

The above-mentioned rights shall not be subject to any restrictions except those provided by law, are necessary to protect national security, public order (ordre public), public health or morals or the rights and freedoms of others, and are consistent with the other rights recognized in the present Covenant.

Like it or not, this is clearly a measure "provided for by law" and also "necessary to protect national security [and] public order". The fact that the measures are unlikely to actually be effective at protecting the public is unlikely to cause a court to rule them a violation.

Just earlier this week Slashdot ran a story to the effect that the government should never regulate technology, because they don't understand any of it. Well, more or less for the same reason, judges tend to give deference to the decisions of government bodies that are (theoretically) experts on the subject. The judge is going to take the word of the government agencies saying "we need to do this to increase security" because hey, they're the ones who spend all their time protecting the public.

As for the US cases you cite, I find nothing in Paul v. Virginia that's even related to this topic. And Corfield v Coryell is a district court ruling, which means it's not precedent. And it isn't in agreement with the actual precedent on the issue of the 14th Amendment (the Slaughterhouse cases) or the right to travel. Gilmore v Gonzales is the case most directly dealing with this issuek, and it's not a Supreme Court ruling but it is binding precedent for part of the country: You don't have the right to any one particular mode of transportation, even if it is far more convenient than any other.

If it were the only available mode of transportation, the constitutionality question would be very different. But in the particular case at issue, you can take a taxi, or a bicycle, or even simply walk.

It worked on the silkworms, so obviously Dr. Doom's sinister radioactive-spider genetic engineering scheme has been a success. It won't be long now before we see ...

Spider monkey, spider monkey. Doing whatever a spider can.
Look out! Here comes the spider monkey.
Can he swing from a thread?
Take a look overhead.
Spider monkey!

I can't remember where I heard it, so I have no proof, but the story I heard goes like this:

They tried, years ago in a trial run somewhere. Customers hated it. Why? A few reasons: One, marking down the price sends the message "this movie sucks!" whether it's true or not, and nobody will go to see it. Two, people will feel like you're extorting them by charging more for the good movies (just like Coca-Cola found out when they decided they could add thermometers to Coke machines and charge more when it was really hot out).

Three, people LIKE it being predictable that a movie always costs X; it turns out in fact people don't like having to do complicated 'well would movie A be worth $10, or should I see movie B instead for $%' calculations. This makes the decision-making much more complicated than "which of these movies do I want to see".

A great many media have discovered more or less the same thing. DVDs, books, audio CDs, movies, video games ... they tend to have standardized prices. Such a practice would not be so common if there weren't very compelling reasons.

The only reason you've given that they're too high is the impact it has on you - this is only half the question. Nobody likes paying taxes. The other half of the question is, how much money does the government need?

If you eat at an expensive restaraunt, you can't complain you shouldn't have to pay for dessert because you already paid $100 for the entree and drinks, and you "thought you paid enough thank you very much".

Clearly, the government does not have enough money to pay its bills. Clearly, borrowing at the rate we have been is at best a stopgap solution. Somewhat less clearly, but still pretty obvious, the gap is too big to close by reducing spending; the deep cuts required would cut into the government's ability to pay for things almost everyone agrees are required.

The obvious conclusion is that taxes are not too high. They're too low.

This does not necessarily mean your taxes specifically are too low. But given the size of this pit, asking only some of us to fill it in doesn't seem right. Taxes need to be raised, and before you ask - yes, I am calling for my own taxes to be raised.

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.

Except that the federal law in question provides that no website is considered either an 'author' or a 'publisher' of any 'information [the post] provided by another information content provider [the user]'. It then goes on to explicitly overrule any state/local laws that conflict with this.

Short version is, this law was intended to shield Internet companies for being passive conduits. It would be a terrible idea if, anytime anyone sent defamatory content through the mail, the victim could sue the Post Office, right?

The problem is, the wording was very broad. So now this company is covered by the liability shield (which provides more or less complete immunity from defamation laws of any kind) because it's user-generated content. But they're NOT a passive conduit, their business is apparently set up to actively solicit this type of arguably-libelous content.

So yeah, your suggestion is a good idea - it might be a good idea to tweak the CDA to strip the liability shield if the user wants something removed and the company refuses. But as written, that's not currently how the law works. Which is unfortunate.

A semester's worth of ab-psych and wikipedia do not a diagnosis make - but he quite likely has Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

He completely flew off the handle when the customer complained about being treated badly (Reacts to criticism with anger, shame, or humiliation), doesn't seem to care about or even really understand why the customer is pissed off (Obsessed with oneself and Lacks empathy and disregards the feelings of others) ... And finally, unrealistic fantasies of ... power speaks for itself, as does [exaggerates] own importance, achievements, and talents
.

"People who are overly narcissistic commonly feel rejected, humiliated and threatened when criticised. To protect themselves from these dangers, they often react with disdain, rage, and/or defiance to any slight criticism, real or imagined ... In cases where [the afflicted] feels a lack of admiration, adulation, attention and affirmation, he/she may also manifest a desire to be feared and to be notorious (narcissistic supply).

Although individuals with NPD are often ambitious and capable, the inability to tolerate setbacks, disagreements or criticism, along with lack of empathy, make it difficult for such individuals to work cooperatively with others or to maintain long-term professional achievements. With narcissistic personality disorder, the individual's self-perceived fantastic grandiosity, often coupled with a hypomanic mood, is typically not commensurate with his or her real accomplishments.

The entire thing describes him almost to the letter.

A four billion dollar non-refundable breakup fee? Why would you want to pay such an enormous fee to abandon your buyout attempt ... and then close the buy out anyway?

The deal is dead, dead, dead as a doornail, done. AT&T would not be paying four billion dollars to one of its biggest competitors if it thought there was a snowball's chance in hell it could avoid doing so.

Republican ... Democrat ... Does it really matter? Neither party's mainstream will support this. I mean, you couldn't ask for a better example of a death panel, unless they were to actually rename this Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee to "death panel". As it is, "Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee" is already Orwellian enough.

Jury nullification is also a great way to enact tyranny of the majority. How many white people went to jail for lynching black people in the thirties? And then there's this case where it's kind of hard to avoid the implication that the jury thought it was okay to kill gays.

Jury nullification yes, can be used to fight oppression by the system, like the Fugitive Slave Law. But it's also great for trial-by-popularity-contest. The entire point of jury nullification is "screw the rules, I'm going to do what's 'right'". Sometimes that works, but jury nullification makes no distinction between good parts of the system, and bad parts.

Many parts of the system are there to protect the fair interests of justice. Juries can nullify them too. The rules over what evidence is admissible, for example - most juries aren't physically sequestered in a room with no phone and no internet the entire duration of the trial. They can easily search the internet for all kinds of half-baked "evidence". The judge is supposed to keep all that out of court, because it's unverified, or scientifically dubious, etc.

Jury nullification is an incredibly dangerous thing. It is not justice at all, because it is fundamentally capricious in nature. Justice is supposed to be the same for everybody.

WTF, slashdot? I never asked you - not once - to change the moderation system to moderate with one click. Now I can't mod this person up, and instead have to post this silly statement that they are, in fact, not Offtopic at all.

Standing is a very important issue. You need to have some kind of rules governing who's allowed to sue over what sorts of incidents. Basically, there should only ever be at most a single lawsuit covering any given topic. If there are ever two lawsuits in different courts over the exact same issue, and they issue conflicting rulings, what happens? The answer is "that must not ever happen".

Even small kids are good at causing trouble when this rule isn't in place - "well, Dad said no ... so I'm gonna go ask Mom".

In this case, Righthaven didn't actually control the copyrights; all they had was a 'right to sue'. So if that gives Righthaven standing, and the original copyright holder still has standing (because they still have these rights) ... then both companies could sue someone, over the same incident, in different courtrooms. And you are not allowed to do that.

"No imaginable military target", huh? Just because you say it doesn't make it true. A nuke would do a pretty severe amount of damage to just about any military installation. Anywhere a lot of military facilities were built close together is a good military target for a nuke. So is anywhere a large number of troops are massed.

It so happens that the last few war the US has been involved in have been against asymmetric guerilla opponents. Nukes are largely useless against relatively small groups of people hiding in plain sight. But that doesn't mean there's no military application for nukes. To the contrary - if it ever had come to nuclear war against the Russians, the Pentagon would have been one of the first places they blew up. That's a classic military target. For an enormous list of other military targets, see this list of US military bases.