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Comment Re: Actually... (Score 1) 192

The word "theft" appears in "theft of services" because it intentionally permanently deprives the service provider of the value they were lawfully and rightfully entitled to in exchange for that service. That intentional and permanent deprivation is what people mean when they say "theft" in anything other then a document that cites a specific statute or law. If they do cite a specific statute or law, what we know for sure is that it will involve this intentional, permanent deprivation of value. It may or may not involve other optional elements like carrying away that are not core to the wrong of theft and which some types of theft have and some don't. (As another example, theft by fraud may or may not involve carrying away something tangible. It's not relevant to the theft.)

Comment Re: Actually... (Score 1) 192

What element of theft is missing? It intentionally deprives the owner of something of value (the admission charged) to which they are entitled. So why isn't it theft?

Sure, it's also unlawful entry. But so what? There's no rule that some action can only fit the elements of one crime. Many things fall into many categories.

So why isn't it theft? What's missing?

Comment Re:Actually... (Score 1) 192

So what is it if I sneak into a movie theater and intentionally permanently deprive them of the $8 they were lawfully and rightfully entitled to? That meets the legal definition of theft -- it intentionally and permanently deprives someone of value to which they were lawfully entitled. But if that's theft, then so is copyright infringement because it also intentionally and permanently deprives someone of value to which they were lawfully and rightfully entitled.

Comment Re:How do you square that with the first amendment (Score 1) 401

I did a bit more research and thinking about this. The First Amendment doesn't apply here. The government doesn't care about the artistic, persuasive, or expressive character of the works, just their function. There is no First Amendment right to speech that can actually make a gun just as there is no First Amendment right to speech that can actually hire a hitman. In cases where artistic expression or persuasion is significantly burdened, there might be an as-applied challenge on First Amendment grounds.

Comment How do you square that with the first amendment (Score 2) 401

Is there any recognized exception to the first amendment that allows the government to prohibit the distribution of accurate information on the grounds that it's dangerous to use or misuse? If not, and they're asking for a new exception to the first amendment, the minimum we should expect is a precise description of the contours of the exception.

Comment Re:Simple solution: (Score 1) 273

So how do you buy a car if no bank or financial institution is willing to do business with you? If the government is going to pass laws requiring you to do business with banks and FIs to live a normal life, surely they can't continue to allow banks and FIs to pick and choose their customers arbitrarily.

Comment Sorry, that makes no sense (Score 1) 227

> This averages out to a shocking 215 kilowatt-hours (KWh) of juice used by miners for each Bitcoin transaction (there are currently about 300,000 transactions per day). Since the average American household consumes 901 KWh per month, each Bitcoin transfer represents enough energy to run a comfortable house, and everything in it, for nearly a week.

That's just being silly. Imagine a company that has three vice presidents and spends $1 billion per year. I can say that company spends "over $300 million per vice president per year". But, of course, that's nonsense because there's no sensible reason to divide the yearly cost by the number of vice presidents. They can't fire one vice president to save $300 million per year nor would it cost them $300 million to add another vice president. So what's the sense of this?

Similarly, there is simply no sensible reason to divide the energy cost by the number of transactions. Reducing the number of transactions won't reduce the energy cost and increasing the number won't increase it. The energy used by bitcoin mining and the number of bitcoin transactions performed are pretty much completely independent and there is simply no reason to divide one by the other.

Comment Re:Somebody has to (Score 2) 549

Actually, incitement of violence is protected speech in the United States. There's a very limited subcategory of incitement that's not protected, but it's not nearly as broad as you are implying. One can, for example, say "All left handed people should be killed as soon as we know they're left handed" and that is not incitement. On the other hand, if you're surrounded by a mob of people who are likely to kill left handed people, you cannot shout, "That guy in the blue hat is left handed, get him!"

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