Quotulatiousness

July 29, 2011

“This is the first global human rights legislation. How can people not know about it?”

Filed under: Cancon, History, Law, Liberty — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 10:54

I’m ashamed to say that this was news to me:

Monday, August 1, is a holiday in Canada. Everyone knows that. But what is the name of the holiday?

[. . .]

It is “Emancipation Day.”

You’re scratching your head, aren’t you? Don’t be embarrassed. Be angry — angry that you have been denied a truly majestic story all Canadians should know and cherish.

On August 1, 1834, slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire. “Emancipation Day” has been celebrated ever since in Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados, and elsewhere.

[. . .]

In 1793, a free black man named Peter Martin – who had served with Butler’s Rangers in the American Revolution – told the legislature of the abduction of Chloe Cooley, a black slave who had been bound, gagged, thrown in a boat, and taken to the United States for sale. Simcoe seized the opportunity and moved to immediately abolish slavery.

It was a radical, audacious move. And it was too much. Wealthy slaveowners in the legislature resisted and Simcoe was forced to compromise: Existing slaves would be denied their freedom but the importation of slaves would stop and the children of slaves would be freed when they reached age 25. In effect, slavery would slowly vanish.

It was not the sweeping victory Simcoe wanted. But it was the abolitionists’ first legislative victory anywhere in the British Empire.

Kashmir performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra

Filed under: Law, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:05

Originally posted by Ghost of a Flea. I listened, I liked, I wanted to buy . . . but neither iTunes nor hmvdigital.ca have it available for purchase.

July 28, 2011

Is Breivik sane enough to prosecute?

Filed under: Europe, Law, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:20

Douglas Murray points out that Breivik’s actions even before the attacks would have marked him as insane:

Anders Behring Breivik believed himself a Knight Templar and awarded himself various military ranks accordingly. He also believed that he and other self-described Islamophobic racists had common cause with jihadis and that the USA has a Jewish problem. So even before he planted a car bomb in a civilian area and gunned down scores of young people, it would have been clear to anyone who bothered to question him that Breivik was insane.

Of course, no discussion of the Oslo massacre is complete without considering the media reaction:

But in the coverage since his atrocities first broke on to the world, two troubling tendencies have converged. The first is the search for reason in a mind that was clearly a stranger to it. The second is the tendency — particularly strong on the left — to use any horrific act as a megaphone for existing prejudices. In the aftermath of the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford in January, the left-wing media and politicians hunted for the right-wingers who they claimed had inspired the attack. That the gunman was not only a loner but a psychotic maniac was largely ignored as they rushed off excitedly to attack their ideological enemies. And so it is with Breivik.

For the past decade and more, every time an Islamist has blown something up, a chorus of voices — mainly from the left — has rightly said that ‘we shouldn’t jump to any conclusions’. But this time it was different. The Labour MP Tom Harris observed, with great frankness, that a ‘palpable relief that swept through the left when the identity of the terrorist was made known… Here, thank God, was a terrorist we can all hate without equivocation: white, Christian and far right-wing. Phew.’ So never mind not jumping to conclusions. When it seemed to emerge that, among many other things, the killer also claimed to be opposed to immigration and was fearful of Islam, that jump became a great leap towards group blame.

July 26, 2011

The implied relationship between traffic tickets and corruption

Filed under: Economics, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:11

Tim Harford linked to this Forbes graphic showing an interesting correlation:

This nicely illustrates what he wrote in 2006:

An alternative view, popular among the common-sense crowd, is that corruption is a problem in Indonesia because Indonesians are crooks by nature; poor countries are poor because they are full of people who are lazy or stupid or dishonest. I disagree out of faith, rather than because the evidence is compelling. But then, what evidence could there be? You would need to take people from every culture, put them somewhere where they could ignore the law with impunity, and see who cheated and who was honest.

That sounds like a tall order for any research strategy, but the economists Ray Fisman and Edward Miguel have realised that diplomats in New York city were, in fact, the perfect guinea pigs. Diplomatic immunity meant that parking tickets issued to diplomats could not be enforced, and so parking legally was essentially a matter of personal ethics.

Fisman and Miguel found support for the common-sense view. Countries with corrupt systems, as measured by Transparency International, also sent diplomats who parked illegally. From 1997-2005, the Scandinavians committed only 12 unpaid parking violations, and most of them were by a single criminal mastermind from Finland. Chad and Bangladesh, regularly at the top of corruption tables, produced more than 2,500 violations between them. Perhaps poor countries are poor because they are full of corrupt people, after all.

July 24, 2011

Amartya Sen’s “no universal justice” notion

Filed under: Books, Government, Law, Liberty — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 13:11

Eric Falkenstein is reading Amartya Sen’s The Idea of Justice and pulls out this example from the book:

Take three kids and a flute. Anne says the flute should be given to her because she is the only one who knows how to play it. Bob says the flute should be handed to him as he is so poor he has no toys to play with. Carla says the flute is hers because she made it.

Sen argues that who gets the flute depends on your philosophy of justice. Bob, the poorest, will have the support of the economic egalitarian. The libertarian would opt for Carla. The utilitarian will argue for Anne because she will get the maximum pleasure, as she can actually play the instrument. Sen states there are no institutional arrangements that can help us resolve this dispute in a universally accepted just manner.

This supposedly shows that there is no single theory of justice, rather one should look at enhancing the redistribution of life-saving goods and removing ‘injustice’.

I haven’t read Sen’s book (and have no immediate intention to do so), so perhaps I’m getting the wrong notion from the example here, but let me rephrase it a tiny bit to clarify why the example didn’t work for me:

Clara makes a flute, which is then taken from her because it might be “awarded” to someone who knows how to play it, or to someone who has no toys. Clara might, under some notions of “justice” be given back the flute she made.

I don’t see this as an example of “justice” so much as a form of theft.

July 21, 2011

This is why the British media is wall-to-wall Murdochmania

Filed under: Britain, Law, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:28

Andrew Orlowski explains how the show trial of Rupert Murdoch has sucked the oxygen out of every other story in the British media:

For the past fortnight, TV and newspaper editors in the UK have pushed aside stories of famine and the European financial crisis — which is greater now than the credit crunch three years ago — in favour of saturation coverage of the troubles of a rival media company.

This rival has real troubles, to be sure, which I will not attempt to diminish. But the volume and intensity of coverage is defined by the real size and reach of News Corporation. And this is not reality, but a myth. Just as children want a Santa, so too do editors and Prime Ministers want a “Murdoch” that resembles the omniscient movie villain/myth Keyser Soze. They’ve defined themselves by this myth.

“Never again should we let a media group get too powerful,” PM David Cameron said today, tuning in to the editors’ mood music. But like so many politicians before him, and specifically the past two Prime Ministers, he has done everything he could to bolster the Murdoch Myth himself. For most of the past two decades, politicians have tugged their forelocks at the Aussie-born tycoon, increasing his perceived influence with each pull.

Haven’t they got the memo about Old Media being dead? Why are they so worried?

Quebec-based botnet taken down

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:19

John Leyden reports on the Laval, Quebec man who has been arrested:

Joseph Mercier, 24, of Laval, Quebec, allegedly hacked school board systems in Canada as well as computer networks in the US, France, Russia and the United Arab Emirates. Mercier — who was in charge of his employer’s information security — reportedly ran his alleged botnet scam at home and at work, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reports.

Mercier was released on bail following a brief court appearance on Tuesday. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police are still investigating the scope of his alleged misdeeds. It’s unclear whether any banking fraud resulted from the scam, the precise motive for which remains unclear.

July 20, 2011

Another aspect of China’s amazing economic growth

Filed under: China, Economics, Law, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:28

Steve Jobs might want to look at the Chinese market a bit more carefully . . . something’s happening that he may need to pay closer attention to:

The Western news media is replete with pithy descriptions of the rapid changes taking place in China: China has the world’s fastest growing economy. China is undergoing remarkable and rapid change. This represents a unique moment for a society changing as quickly as China.

You probably read such things in the paper every day — but if you have never been to China, I’m not sure you know quite what this means on a mundane level. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere on this blog, in the 2+ years that RP and I have been in our apartment, much of the area around us has been torn down, rebuilt, or gutted and renovated – in some cases, several times over. I had the thought, only half-jokingly, that when we returned from a couple months abroad, we might not be able to recognize our apartment building. Or that it might not be there at all.

As it turns out, my fears were baseless — our scrappy little home remains. The neighborhood, however, has definitely kicked it up a notch or seven. Starbucks has opened not one, but THREE branches (that I encountered) within a 10 minute walk of one another. An H&M has opened across from our apartment building. These are the kinds of major Western brands that were previously only represented in Kunming by fast food chains like McDonald’s and KFC. Our neighborhood has quickly become the swanky shopping center of the city.

Update, 21 July: Andrew Orlowski thinks I’ve been taken in by a non-story:

Some stories are so unusual, you immediately wonder if they’re too good to be true. On Tuesday, a Western NGO in China posted a remarkable tale, reporting that ingenious Chinese retailers in a medium-sized provincial city called Kunming had cloned an Apple Retail Store, faithfully reproducing the staff T-shirts, furniture, display material, and name tags.

[. . .]

But another 10 seconds with Google would reveal that in China, as in the UK and many other countries, Apple has a network of authorised resellers. Apple lays down very strict guidelines on how the resellers must present the gear. The sales material is Apple’s, and the specifications are extremely precise. And to be an Apple “Premium Reseller”, you have to look a lot like an Apple Apple Store, but naturally, you can’t call yourself one. There are hundreds of these, with Apple manufacturer Foxconn’s brother Gou Tai-chang planning 100.

[. . .]

Think of it like this: if you had a Jaguar showroom, anywhere in the world, would you operate from a dodgy lock-up and advertise it with a hand-painted sign? I thought not. You’d want it to look as slick and expensive as the real thing. I’m not sure why we expect Chinese Apple resellers not to do so, too.

July 18, 2011

Moral outrage is a bad source of legislative impetus

Filed under: Law, Media, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:53

Steve Chapman attempts to explain why the multiple “Caylee’s Law” proposals in many state legislatures are uniformly bad ideas that will become bad laws:

It was once suggested, as a general rule of staying alive, never to fly on an airline named after a state or the owner. As a general rule of sound government, it’s also a good idea never to enact a law named after a person. Personalizing criminal law usually stems from fruitless outrage at a freakish event.

Plenty of legislators are ignoring that risk. Their proposals, all going by the name “Caylee’s Law,” are an understandable response to the acquittal of Casey Anthony of killing her 2-year-old daughter. Swearing when you stub your toe is also understandable, which doesn’t mean it will do your toe the slightest good.

[. . .]

Targeting parents who fail to report missing kids on a government-approved schedule will probably accomplish nothing useful. Conscientious adults with grounds for concern already call the cops. But the change would burden police with trivial cases that would soon resolve themselves.

Already kids are reported missing at the rate of more than half a million a year, usually because they run away or neglect to tell parents where they are. A 2002 Justice Department study noted that “all but a very small percentage are recovered fairly quickly.”

But a mother whose son has a habit of absconding and reappearing could go to prison for exercising sensible patience. A divorced dad whose ex-wife gets angry when he’s tardy returning the kids from a weekend outing could give new meaning to “custodial parent.”

July 17, 2011

In the aftermath of Georgia’s “victory” over illegal farm workers

Filed under: Americas, Food, Law, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:54

Last month, I linked to a story about Georgia’s attempt to crack down on illegal agricultural workers. It was, in terms of achieving its stated goals, a big success: illegal workers left in droves for other jurisdictions. It wasn’t quite as successful from the point of view of farmers:

To combat the shortage, Governor Nathan Deal has authorized using criminal offenders out on probation to replace the mostly Latino migrant workers. It’s not working out so well:

    The first batch of probationers started work last week at a farm owned by Dick Minor…So far, the experiment at Minor’s farm is yielding mixed results. On the first two days, all the probationers quit by mid-afternoon, said Mendez, one of two crew leaders at Minor’s farm.

    “Those guys out here weren’t out there 30 minutes and they got the bucket and just threw them in the air and say, ‘Bonk this, I ain’t with this, I can’t do this,’” said Jermond Powell, a 33-year-old probationer. “They just left, took off across the field walking.”…

H/T to John Henke for the link.

July 14, 2011

Yet another twist in the twisty-turny mess that is Ontario liquor law

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Law, Wine — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:42

Michael Pinkus responds to an unfair accusation against Diamond Estates over their ability to open a retail store in Scarborough (most wineries are not legally able to do this):

Upon reading the Fashionable Press’ article I shot back the following (on everybody’s favourite medium these days) the Facebook comment section: “Have you really not been paying attention??? Diamond has a store because they bought a winery that had 1) a pre-1993 license and 2) had a pre-existing store. No mystery here, no cronyism, just smart business sense. In Ontario’s archaic system there are two things that reign supreme: a pre-1993 license (which allows you to blend foreign and domestic wines) and a winery with an outside store attached. Diamond got them both when they acquired DeSousa.”

The reply from Fashionable was quick: “Yes we understand that point the issue remains why no other winery can do the same thing?”

To which I answered, “This comes back to the archaic laws … not cronyism or the fact that Murray Marshall is chairman and CEO of VQA Canada. As many know I am not a huge supporter of the big wineries that can blend (and do) but Murray is working well within the crappy, backward, stink-ass system we call the alcohol laws in Ontario. If another winery wanted to do it they can pony up the 3+ million Cilento will sell their license for (of course I may be off by a few million on the price because that pre-93 piece of paper is a license to print money).”

To understand all this, and all it’s intricacies and complexities is to understand why Ontario’s small wineries are so pissed off (and yes that is the right wording here) when the subject of VQA stores is brought up. But back to Diamond … The moment DeSousa went up for sale Murray saw it as an opportunity to get a store that wasn’t tied to Niagara and a way to get his products into the hands of consumers in the much more lucrative market of Toronto (in this case Scarborough).

Now the astute amongst you (or the Ontario wine history buff) will note that Lakeview also has a pre-1993 license (est. 1991) – but that’s where it gets even wonkier. While Lakeview would be allowed to blend foreign with domestic wines, the original owners never branched out to buy another retail store, so their operation was stuck in Niagara post-1993 when the moratorium on wine store licenses was imposed. DeSousa (est. 1990) on the other hand, did acquire one additional retail licence prior to the cut-off.

The hard part about owning these stores is they are rarely permanent, and here’s why. The rationale behind placing one of these additional retail outlets somewhere is that it is an “under-serviced neighbourhood” … Fashionable asks the following: “Why didn’t the LCBO find this under-serviced gem and plunk one of its outlets there? … Why did they choose in a gentlemanly way to cede over to Diamond?”

To that I say ‘Have No Fear’, if that Diamond store does well then you can bet the farm that the liquor monopoly will parade in like a white knight and announce a store nearby … which will force Diamond to relocate the store to another “under-serviced area” … and how, you may ask, will the LC know that Diamond is doing so well? That my friends is what smells bad in this entire deal: Who do you think gets to look at the sales numbers from these off site stores? Hmm? They’re not called the KGBO by some for nothing.

So the brief and fleeting moment that Diamond has taken advantage of will disappear as soon as the LCBO decides that they need to move into that disadvantaged area and open an LCBO store, which will force the private seller to close their store in the area. Nice.

July 13, 2011

A bit more on the Caledonia settlement

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Law, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:58

The National Post looks at the shameful way the Ontario government has acted through the confrontation in Caledonia:

This week’s settlement of a class-action lawsuit fits right in with the government’s modus operandi. Four years after the suit was filed, Mr. McGuinty’s Liberals will pay a group of residents and business owners $20-million in recompense for the disruption that was caused when the Ontario Provincial Police elected to ignore the rampant violence and lawbreaking that accompanied the aboriginals’ illegal seizure of land. The money will be divided among about 800 claimants, according to a formula related to their proximity to the occupied territory and exposure to acts of violence. As usual, the province has done its best to gag any complaints by insisting that details of the agreement remain confidential.

The class-action suit specified four instances at the height of the dispute in which roads were closed, court injunctions were violated and a hydro-electric transformer was burned. But those were just a sampling of the many episodes in which police, acting under clear instruction, blatantly ignored the aboriginals’ contempt for the law. Families were terrorized, threatened, driven from their homes or forced to show aboriginal “passports” to gain access to their own neighbourhoods. It was like a scene from some balkanized tin-pot regime, in other words — local residents might be inclined to call it the Banana Republic of Ontario.

Donna Reid, a Caledonia resident who has been among the most critical of the government, dismissed the settlement as “hush money” by a Liberal administration that is facing re-election and wants the issue to go away. The amount received by most residents will do little to offset five years worth of disruption that has embittered relations and turned part of the town into a no-go area.

July 12, 2011

An amusing copyright tale (for a change)

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 16:06

Jesse Brown has the most entertaining copyright story I’ve read in quite a while:

But some of the hooligans exposed on Youtube found a clever way to get the video removed—copyright claims. Under Youtube’s “Notice and Takedown” policy, all you need to do is claim you own the rights to a video and demand that it be removed, and Youtube will remove it. The video’s uploader will be informed of the allegation and then have a chance to challenge it.

But here’s the rub: in order to claim ownership of a video’s copyright, you have to identify yourself. And when Youtube informs the uploader that they’re being accused of a copyright violation, they have to tell them who their accuser is. So rioters are indirectly handing their names over to the very people who were trying to identify them.

Another end-run around privacy expectations

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Technology, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 13:44

Julian Sanchez thinks the government has stopped caring whether you are innocent or guilty online:

Thanks to an unwise Supreme Court decision dating from the 70s, information about your private activites loses its Fourth Amendment protection when its held by a “third party” corporation, like a phone company or Internet provider. As many legal scholars have noted, however, this allows constitutional privacy safeguards to be circumvented via a clever two-step process. Step one: The government forces private businesses (ideally the kind a citizen in the modern world can’t easily avoid dealing with) to collect and store certain kinds of information about everyone — anyone might turn out to be a criminal, after all. No Fourth Amendment issue there, because it’s not the government gathering it! Step two: The government gets a subpoena or court order to obtain that information, quite possibly without your knowledge. No Fourth Amendment problem here either, according to the Supreme Court, because now they’re just getting a corporation’s business records, not your private records. It makes no difference that they’re only keeping those records because the government said they had to.

Current law already allows law enforcement to require retention of data about specific suspects — including e-mails and other information as well as IP addresses — to ensure that evidence isn’t erased while they build up enough evidence for a court order. But why spearfish when you can lower a dragnet? Blanket data requirements ensure easy access to a year-and-a-half snapshot of the online activities of millions of Americans — every one a potential criminal.

July 11, 2011

Can the government force you to provide your password?

Filed under: Government, Law, Liberty, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:37

Declan McCullagh discusses a potentially precedent-setting case in Colorado that may determine whether the 5th amendment applies to your personal passwords:

The Colorado prosecution of a woman accused of a mortgage scam will test whether the government can punish you for refusing to disclose your encryption passphrase.

The Obama administration has asked a federal judge to order the defendant, Ramona Fricosu, to decrypt an encrypted laptop that police found in her bedroom during a raid of her home.

Because Fricosu has opposed the proposal, this could turn into a precedent-setting case. No U.S. appeals court appears to have ruled on whether such an order would be legal or not under the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment, which broadly protects Americans’ right to remain silent.

I’d hope that the protections against self-incrimination would apply in this case, but government power has been expended so far in the last ten years that it would not surprise me if the courts gut this right in their deference to the executive (just like every other time, it seems).

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