The analogy can be made to work however...

Imagine a pamphlet, printed in a country that's not Finland, that includes, like many do, a back cover soliciting for donations for some worthy cause. I mention to my Finnish friend an article I happened to read in aforementioned pamphlet, and they say to me "That sounds fascinating, I'd be very interested in reading that article. Can you send it to me?*". So I pop the pamphlet in an envelope, and post it to them. So now a Fin, in Finland, is in possession of something soliciting funds, from an organisation that has not applied for permission to solicit funds within Finland. Uh oh!

Are you suggesting that the organisation that wrote the pamphlet should be held liable for any fines levied by the Finnish courts? Perhaps instead the person who mailed the pamphlet should be held liable, even though they have nothing to do with the organisation doing the soliciting? If neither of these is the case, in what way is this situation different to what is being discussed?

*If it helps you might like to think of this request as akin to the http get request to load the web page in your browser.

You say this like it's a bad thing. I can't help but think that actual person specific data is a better reason to stop an individual, and subject them to a more detailed scrutiny, than the police basing their decision on race, clothing worn, policeman's intuition, or whatever reason takes their fancy at the time. Once we have granted the police the right to stop and search, giving them the ability to focus on those more likely to be breaking the law is a good thing, surely?

I have to say, public records are public records. If the public were not meant to be able to access this data it wouldn't be public. While I'm sure there will be individuals, some of whom won't even be on those lists you mentioned or ashamed of what the web remembers of them, who will object to this instant access on principle I'm struggling to see exactly what that principle is.

I tend to agree. I would hope, however, that any video they do record is both timestamped and watermarked in some way, so as to provide some level of trust in the veracity of any footage.

And this I emphatically agree with. The occasions when certain police officers have forbidden members of the public from filming them, and even removed cameras from them, is just wrong. There is no justification, and any excuse is generally couched in terms of an appeal to authority. That authority does not exist.

As quite a few others have said, I read /. for the comments. I have been reading the comments, and even, occasionally, the stories, here for over 15 years. And, while I have taken a month off here, a month of there, I keep coming back, to get a feeling for what other people think. I read far more than I comment, and, even when I do comment, half of them seem to be unnecessary, and pedantic, corrections to wiser, or at least more knowledgeable, peoples' posts. Well, sorry for the last part. At least it shows I'm paying attention, if not always to the right things...

Anyway, preamble aside, I'm afraid that somehow I managed to miss both previous occasions when technocrat.net went live, and subsequently died. Clearly the time was not right. Unfortunately, I have no idea if now is the right time either. Will Slashdot beta, and the associated outpouring of venom, create the tipping point you need? Again, that's a question I cannot answer, though I'll certainly throw my weight (all 9 stone something of it) behind any attempt you make to create a better version of Slashdot / replacement for Groklaw.

I have a few concerns however:

Firstly, as Archfield asked above, will any death of the existing Slashdot result in an exodus or a diaspora. I have seen two (so far, I think) other Slashdot alternatives mooted. Weight of numbers is one of the major factors likely to be critical in establishing a viable community, one that will last. Another major factor, as you touched on above, is the provision of content, by which I mean the initial seed, the story, the hook, that gets people talking. How can the issue of submissions, and the editing of them, be addressed and improved?

Secondly, one of the reasons I like Slashhdot, is the fact that I can flag people who post well thought out (infomative, insightful, educational, etc.) comments, whether I agree with them or not, as friends. There's a lot of history here. While I am loathe to lose this I do appreciate that, should Slashdot actually fail, whichever alternative I settle on will have the same problems but, is there any way that this can be mitigated?

Finally (well, far from finally, but...) should you bite the bullet and resurrect technocrat.net again, what's the chance of getting a three digit id?

I hate myself for doing this (well, almost), but, unless I was confused, and we had actually intended to break the laws of relativity, I think we campaigned to have him formally pardoned.

Sorry.

Somewhat off-topic, but I thought I'd correct this misconception. The word 'they', though normally plural, can also refer to a person, singular. No gender implications one way or the other.

That you have found it impossible to understand that "buy three items, cheapest free" doesn't involve buying four items doesn't say much for your reading comprehension. That you further seem to fail to recognise that the discount gained doesn't involve adding any numbers up at all speaks volumes about your critical thinking or logical reasoning skills.

Then again, maybe, like me, you've just engaged in a knee-jerk reaction to demonstrate how smart you are to yourself by putting someone else down. Welcome to the internet.

I can understand why someone might be wary of them, but weary?

Hmm... Actually, perhaps that could work, if they constantly emit a soporific, ensuring everyone is too tired to bother doing anything 'bad'.

I'm going to guess you didn't actually bother to read the article then:

No! Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells are simply (usually) skin cells that have been 'regressed' back to the state of stem cells. There is absolutely no requirement to kill the source creature. It would be slightly unfortunate if this were the case, as they are currently being used in medical research to treat various issues such as age related macular degeneration (age related blindness) or the creation of artificial livers.

Spin is the bane of honest reporting. But, again, going back to the article:

"...cultured meat may need 35% to 60% less energy, occupy 98% less land, and produce 80% to 95% less greenhouse gases than conventional meat."

Well, what do you know, other potential benefits of the technology were addressed within the article. The fact that the summary chose to accentuate the possibility of creating meat without killing animals is not really representative of the entire article. In fact, if anything it's quite the reverse:

"Cultured meat is now grown in medium with fetal calf serum, a supplement made from blood collected at slaughterhouses; scientists have yet to find an alternative that doesn't involve dead animals."

However, I strongly suspect that the issue here is not one of inability but practicality. It would be quite possible to take blood from live animals, not killing them, and extract the serum this way. I'm just not sure why you'd bother, given the rate that biotechnology is advancing. We will soon have the knowledge and skills required to create the necessary culture 'soup' or medium, all within the laboratory.

I do find it slightly amusing that the presentation is due to be held in an arts centre. But is it really art?

Copyright is not a moral right. It is not morally right to deny others the 'ability' to copy the material in question for a period of, potentially, a hundred years or more, and certainly much longer than the lifespan of the flesh and blood creator of that material.

It is a legal right, and nothing more.

If anything it is the current laws on copyright which are immoral...

Emphasis mine.

Wouldn't a supposedly sterile plant spontaneously producing viable seeds actually count as a mutation? I recall something like that actually happening some years back, when gmo's were all the rage (erm...being raged about). 'Fraid you might have to use your own Google-fu on that though.

Does this mean the end of gmo's? Nope. Are most of them safe? Probably. Does this mean that the anti-gmo folk were wrong? Not all of them apparently...

You could almost argue that any block, even if you 'can' opt out of it, is an unfair restriction on free trade. As for no-one wanting their daughter involved with porn, maybe it's time people realised what equality really means, and ask the woman in question what she feels about it, as opposed to letting their own moral bias infringe upon others' rights.

Sometimes I do despair...

Nice to see that your people have worked out how to fully utilise the marvels of headers and footers and version numbering in your important documentation...

Compare this case with that of the American soldier, a sergeant I believe, who while serving in Afghanistan decided to go on a shooting spree in a village close to his camp. He broke into several civilian dwellings, and killed 16 people, including many children. The Afghanis are understandably furious, and are demanding that this soldier be handed over to them, to be tried and sentenced in an Afghan court. So far the Americans have refused, and it is likely that they will continue to do so. Now, irrespective of what excuses they might come up with (and I'm struggling to think of any that might be termed reasonable), what does this say about America's attitude to other nations, and their rule of law? Again, compare the extradition to America of a citizen of another country, for doing something which was not illegal in the country in which he did it, to the murder of 16 people in a country by a citizen of the US, and not allowing that country to even try the man.

Hypocritical doesn't even begin to say it!

I can really see the US/UK agreeing to any demands to remove all articles about Tiananmen Square, or removal of all criticisms of any or all religions. (/sarcasm)

What is more likely to happen is that the west will veto most if not all proposals originating in the east and the middle east, and Russia and the east will veto most if not all proposals originating in the west (excuse the culturally biased geographic descriptions), and the system will be happily paralysed, resulting in no change to the current status quo. To my mind this is infinitely preferable to a system which can be destroyed, or at least greatly harmed, by unilateral action on the part of any bully-boy nation.

I'm not sure the UN taking over the internet is the right answer, but I am absolutely sure that leaving things the way they are is the wrong one. The article gives one good reason why...

Rarely, but it does happen. It does remain to be seen if anything will come of this. However it also remains to be seen if anything will come of the proposals in the article under discussion. A proposal is not a law.

If you do live in the UK, and you do care about the governance of the country in which you live, there are ways of making your voice heard. If we chose not to make use of those avenues, or we chose to limit our actions to posting here then we have only ourselves to blame.

If you do not live in the UK, and you're posting in response to an article regarding proposed changes to the law in the UK, why the f*ck does Ron Paul have anything to do with it?