Comment Re:Empirical Evidence (Score 1) 273
Go ahead, school me.
Go ahead, school me.
Yes, we have moved to verification. That's kinda the point. Science is empirical, religion is not. If you want the religious perspective on social issues, you use received knowledge (religious texts) or rationalism (logic). You do not conduct an experiment to measure God's opinion on the matter.
Science does not deal in absolute truth. It deals in empirical truth, in other words, things that match observations. Empirical truth is limited therefore to what can be observed, and more typically what can be measured.
I do not know of an objective basis for privileging empiricism over rationalism over religion. However, for me personally, if it can't be observed I'm not going to assign a truth value to it, and if it doesn't match observation, it's wrong. It is unquestionably the case however that religion is not under any condition a science, and cannot be evaluated scientifically. Frankly, I cannot imagine the confusion of ideas that led you to espouse that, but if this is an apology for your unscientific beliefs, rest assured that they have a different basis and scope than your scientific ones, and as you say, there's no reason from a philosophical perspective to prefer either system.
No, natural sciences have started from observation. Science is empirical, and theology is without empirical evidence. It relies on received knowledge and rationalism. There is no observational test which can be used to determine the existence of any given god or religious belief, therefore science can not be used to evaluate theological truths.
This is not to say that theological truths are better or worse than empirical ones, but for me personally, I will consider anything that contradicts empirical evidence to be wrong. I don't have a sound basis for telling other people how to determine truth, and empiricism is not without its flaws: things are only true to the degree to which they can be observed, which always leaves some sort of error factor. There are a number of moral and social phenomena which are either intractable or undecidable by empiricism. Religion does happen to be one of those areas.
Science is not the categorization of knowledge, it is the search for truth, specifically empirical truth. A little knowledge of epistemology would go a long way towards settling disputes about science versus religion.
I could explain that gender is mostly a social construct, or a mental one (as opposed to biological sex, which has some fuzzy boundaries but is otherwise more clearly defined). I could explain transsexualism in terms of foreign hand syndrome, where your brain is telling you that your body is wrong and the difference between your mind and body is a continual torment. I could tell you about years of secret anguish and desperate struggles against one's self, as often as not leading to suicide.
But I'm pretty sure you have an unshakable faith in a baseless opinion. I'd wish some dire situation on you for your close-mindedness, but I can't actually think of a worse curse than being willfully ignorant and without compassion.
If other judges follow this precedent, it will be the death knell of civil litigation involving the internet in any way. I don't like how trolls do business, but I don't think changing the rules like this is a good idea overall.
This isn't changing the rules. This is following the rules.
See my article in the ABA's Judges Journal about how judges had been bending the rules for the RIAA. "Large Recording Companies v. The Defenseless: Some Common Sense Solutions to the Challenges of the RIAA Litigation". The Judges' Journal, Judicial Division of American Bar Association. Summer 2008 edition, Part 1 of The Judges Journals' 2-part series, "Access to Justice".
Remember, Malibu Media can just change venues too and start this all over again... This judge didn't do anything worth while for you and me and opened himself up to an appeal where he obviously will be slapped. About the only thing he accomplished is getting Malibu Media out of his courtroom and off his docket, for now. Nothing else will change.
I beg to differ.
Malibu Media can't choose the venue, or the judge.
If Judge Hellerstein's decision is followed by other judges, it will be the death knell of the present wave of Malibu Media litigation.
I fully appreciate your perspective and I agree that the waters are getting pretty muddy when you start trying to tie an IP address to a person, but the issue here is the issuing of the subpoena and not letting Malibu Media pursue discovery. They must be allowed to protect their rights in civil court, and that means they must be allowed to subpoena third parties for information so they can move from "John Doe" to an actual name and in this case, that takes a subpoena from the court.
While your argument for discovery has some logic to it, it is based on a false assumption of fact : that Malibu Media, once it obtains the name and address of the internet account subscriber, will serve a subpoena on that person in an attempt to find out the name of the person who should be named as a defendant.
Malibu Media's uniform practice, once it gets the name and address, is to immediately amend the complaint to name the subscriber as the infringer/defendant and then serve a summons and amended complaint, not a subpoena, on the subscriber.
This is in every single case .
Look! The rat brain computer has learned to post on Slashdot!
I'm not so sure I agree that this make sense...
You didn't read the judges 11 page opinion then, where he makes his reasons very clear. Among other things, the trolls claim that they need the information to take people to court, but they never do; they just abuse the courts as a cheap way to get information for their blackmail scheme. The point that an IP is not an ID is exactly the point here, because the copyright troll wouldn't have any right to the name of anyone than the copyright infringer. And the fine judge found out that these copyright trolls have in several instances just ignored court orders and have just lied to the courts.
Well said
There's apparently a blanket rule against using the court system to conduct fishing expeditions.
If so, most judges have been unaware of it these past 10 years.
Hi Ray, nice to see the NYCL moniker around here again. I have a few questions if you're willing. First, you indicate that a judge has denied discovery due to several factors, one being that an IP address does not identify any particular individual. Can you speak to the weight or breadth of this specific Court's opinion here, in layman's terms? I see references to the Eastern and Southern districts of New York, might this decision influence cases outside of those jurisdictions?
It's not binding on anyone. But Judge Hellerstein is a very well respected judge, so it will probably have a lot of 'persuasive authority'.
Second, this business of "if the Motion Picture is considered obscene, it may not be eligible for copyright protection." I've read about certain cases where the Court stated that obscenity has no rigid definition, but "I'll know it when I see it." Does that have any bearing on the Malibu case? Was this some kind of completely outrageous pornography, where any community standard would likely find it to be obscene, or was it just run-of-the-mill porn? Would it matter either way? Would the opinion have likely been the same if the case involved a blockbuster Hollywood film instead of a pornographic and potentially obscene film?
I haven't researched that question yet, and I may well be litigating that issue in the near future, since I have several cases against Malibu Media which are now in litigation mode... so all I can say is, stay tuned.
Lastly, I'm curious whether or not you've kept up with developments in the case regarding Prenda Law, and how you might compare this case to that one, if at all. I try to read Ken White's PopeHat blog every once in awhile to see how poorly the Prenda copyright trolls are faring. It doesn't look good for Prenda, and I wonder if you would put Malibu in the same proverbial boat.
The Prenda people are a bunch of strange people who, based on reports I've read, may well wind up doing jail time. I know nothing about the Malibu Media people. If I did find out something really bad about them in would probably wind up in my court papers if relevant to the case or to their credibility.
I should clarify: I didn't mean actual expansion of the law. What I meant in regard to item "F" was: since when does difficulty of enforcement, even if they did prove it, justify loosening the standards of evidence? I did not think that was allowable.
Well I knew exactly what you meant Jane, even before you 'clarified' it.
Hi, NYCL! I haven't noticed you around here much lately. Is item F even a thing? Since when does the difficulty of enforcing a law allow judicial expansion of the law? I thought that idea had been thoroughly buried a long time ago.
I have to agree with you Jane Q. For 10 years I've been trying to wake the courts up to the fact that they're not supposed to bend the law to help content owners just because the content owners don't know who committed the infringement. Glad to see them coming around.
I think that if this troll can prove they have a copyright on the material and the right to enforce it, they will have a good case to appeal this decision and it will likely be overturned.
You also have to prove that the person you're suing actually committed the infringement. It's not enough that they paid the bill for an internet service account that somebody used to commit an infringement.
Math is like love -- a simple idea but it can get complicated. -- R. Drabek
