To my knowledge most states don't tax for services (especially not as highly as sales are taxed). Have you ever heard of a musician or lawyer (or even your aforementioned chef or beautician) having to collect any sort of sales tax?

Perhaps you don't understand the point of my comment. I fail to see how it is idealistic or naive to acknowledge and protect your ability to do what you need without the risk of law suits. If anything, most people would consider that the polar opposite of naivete: paranoia :P. Naturally, the risk is fairly negligible for many people using many products but that doesn't negate the wisdom of wishing to cover your ass just in case. Granted there is a fair amount of idealism involved in the FOSS movement but don't let it cloud your view of the practical benefits of not being legally encumbered and supporting technologies that help defend it.

You might begin to care if a patent/copyright holder sees what you're doing with their IP and decides to sue you for it. Even if it currently isn't a concern for you, it still is for many others and might become your concern as well eventually (depending on what you do and how public it is).

Not all concerns about the Freedom to use a technology are matters of obsessive fanboyism or faith. There are plenty of pragmatic concerns associated with IP that only the most reckless would choose to ignore. A technology can be 1000x better than anything else that exists but still be effectively useless or a huge risk to end-users or business management. As an end user, I don't want my choices limited by how many technologies a prospective vendor can afford to employ. As a developer, I want to be able to create or fix technologies I encounter without much bureaucracy, being hindered by secrecy or risking having all of my hard work phased out through planned obsolescence strategies. As a business owner, I don't want the items purchased by my business to be hindered by cumbersome, nuanced, legal agreements. In my view, the diversity and innovation facilitated by Free software is almost always better even in cases where proprietary counterparts have a few more features or slightly better performance. Essentially, the freedom to do what you want has its own innate value that, while hard to quantify, should be thoroughly considered before making *any* important decisions, both technology-related and otherwise. It's not always easy to predict when and how those restrictions might hinder your opportunities in the future.

I believe the headline is based on this statement FTA:

Granted it isn't as conclusive as the headline but it does have that connotation...

Getting kicked off of the police force is a far cry from "being convicted" and from what I have seen, even that is relatively rare as a result of their misconduct while on patrol. Generally speaking, that is the MOST serious punishment they get for any crime they get caught committing while on duty, whether there is hard evidence/multiple witnesses or not. In most cases they and/or their fellow officers can fairly easily fabricate testimony to "justify" any action they get caught taking.

That is hardly a fact. The truth is I have been following the Mehrsele case and, AFAIK, it is the first ever murder trial any officer in the country has ever received for his actions on duty (though there have been a number for their actions off-duty) even in cases where suspects were clearly shot in the back on video and at least one I know of where the suspect was shot for following orders and the shooting officer was caught changing his testimony at least twice (Elio Carrion Case). Much like Rodney King, the Mehrsele/Grant case is very likely only because of clear video evidence and national attention. Also much like Rodney King's assault, I doubt there will be any criminal conviction.

Also note that the officer seen clearly repeatedly punching Grant in the head without provocation (the same officer who was kneeling on his neck) had no charges filed whatsoever. Though he did eventually get fired, it was not until months after the incident occurred and, again, very likely that was due to national scrutiny (possibly in conjunction with other complaints).

What he said is pretty much accurate. In many places you cannot even officially file a complaint. In quite a few officers try to threaten/intimidate complainers. Most DA's are completely unwilling to even bring charges against officers without VERY hard evidence because of work/gov politics and because it is difficult to convict when judges and juries nearly always side with officers over anyone else who. DA's rely pretty much solely on evidence collected by the officer in question and his colleagues. It is illustrated time and again that officers are generally unwilling to implicate their colleagues for anything they do. On top of it all, (and perhaps most significantly) admitting any form of culpability could implicate fellow officers as well as make the entire department susceptible to lawsuits for their training and/or policies.

All of these factors conspire (along with a few others) to make it near impossible to even get an officer disciplined, let alone held accountable criminally. Most of those factors are covered in the report mentioned above. While the comment I am defending might be a slight exaggeration, I think part of your problem is that you are prone to oversimplifying statements to read what you want. He is saying that it is very difficult for someone who has been unjustly treated by an officer to do anything about it in this country, especially if they are a minority, from out of town and have no money or political pull. This is pretty obvious given what he said and the context in which he said it.

The only part that even slightly conflicts with my own experiences and findings regards bribery because, AFAIK, that usually only works with the dirtiest of cops and usually pertains to ongoing criminal activity rather than withdrawing charges/tickets that have already been filed or disciplining any misconduct. While I will grant you that misconduct is less likely to occur in some places than in others, I'm pretty convinced that it exists in nearly every department in the country and nearly impossible for the average person to do anything about it in 99.999% of cases.

Please do not mistake a lack of motivation with lack of ability. As you mentioned in your previous reply to me, and which I bore in mind in my initial reply to you (thanks in part to my previous experiences attempting to illuminate the pervasiveness and impact of police misconduct), anecdotes hardly qualify as any form of real evidence. More often than not, especially when they oppose the justice system, any form of anecdotal evidence is simply met with accusations of dishonesty or dismissed entirely. It is for this very reason that many experiences with police misconduct, my own included, continue to go unreported. Rather than attempt such an endeavor, which has proven time and again to be futile, I chose a different approach - shedding light on and challenging the attitudes and behavior that continually shield even the worst of officers from punishment and result in those who are least able to defend themselves suffering unjustly.

Besides this, why exactly should I feel compelled to provide ANY evidence refuting your claims when you've provided none to support them? Nevertheless, you asked for it so I shall present some:

http://www.hrw.org/legacy/reports98/police/uspo25.htm (Though it is a bit dated, a very insightful report. The specific section linked deals with internal affairs but there is a LOT more to the report than that, including several cases of police torturing suspects and explanations from various justice system officials of why police are rarely if every prosecuted).

There are virtually NO anecdotes of corrupt police being convicted and statistics reflect this. Those few cases when they are convicted rarely have anything to do with their on-duty conduct even when there is video evidence or multiple of their crimes. Your belief to the contrary clearly illustrates that it is you and not I who hasn't considered it and has a poor grasp on the reality of the situation. Read the aforementioned report and then watch some older youtube videos and look up the cases involved. You will find that by-and-large the only cases that even go to trial are those which make national headlines. Most of the rest are swept under the rug and settled out of court for undisclosed sums of PD-supplied money (when the victims are lucky enough to find a lawyer and have hard evidence).

Wrong. That isn't even remotely what the poster I am defending said. This absurd statement as well as your interpretation of my first reply to you very clearly indicates how biased and irrational you are. There is a big difference between "if you are from out of town or a minority" [reporting police corruption] and "no justice anywhere in the US". What he said is absolutely true and it is YOU who are idiotic for feeling as strongly as you do without properly researching the subject and considering the implications of pervasive belief that officers can't lie and only people with a record or baggy pants ever have a motive to lie about a criminal case.