Companies have always tried to corral their customers into behaving in ways that maximize the companies’ profits, even if that’s not best for the customers: forcing you to use “official” printer ink, to buy your printers and terminals from the same company that sold you your mainframe, to get your apps from the company that sold you your phone.
One especially effective profit-maximization strategy is controlling repairs. If a company can force you to use its official repair services, they can set prices for parts and service, and force you to use original manufacturer’s parts, rather than third-party parts or refurbished parts. And, of course, they can refuse to repair a product after a certain number of years: in the absence of a third-party repair option, this means that you have to throw away your product and buy another one from the company.
Though the urge to control customers to maximize profits is as old as business, the digital era has seen an important shift in the tactics used to make business models mandatory. The abuse of laws like Section 1201 of the DMCA (which bans breaking DRM), the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (which lets companies treat their “license agreements” as though they had the force of law), as well as trade secrecy and monopolistic supply-chain control has literally criminalized many forms of independent repair, and it’s getting worse.
Last year, 18 state level Right to Repair bills were crushed by a big business coalition led by the tech industry. These bills would end companies’ war on independent service by forcing them to supply parts, manuals, and diagnostic codes to independent technicians.
October 22, 2018
The right to repair
October 20, 2018
QotD: Women and violence
Activists for feminism are continually characterizing the world of women as one of terror, abuse, and uncertainty. For Leitch to take them at their word, applying a tough-on-criminals spin, is an authentic Trump touch. I do not wholly approve of the tactic, but, as much as I think some feminists are attention-hungry zanies, I recognize the kernel of truth in their image of the universe. I’ve never had a close female friend who could not tell of bizarre, creepy, threatening things happening to them — sights and encounters that, to a male with an ordinary upbringing, seem to have wriggled from the corner of a Hieronymus Bosch painting.
[…]
The actual status of women is that they belong to the physically weaker sex. Biology has given male primates greater upper-body strength, stronger grip, and testosterone. Men commit the overwhelming majority of consequential violence everywhere in the world throughout all history. (Men’s rights advocates sometimes argue that women commit just as many violent acts as men, which misses the point by such a wide margin that it is the intellectual equivalent of throwing like a girl.)
Colby Cosh, “I’m with Leitch — give women pepper spray (but keep it from the men)”, National Post, 2016-12-05.
October 18, 2018
Canada legalizes cannabis … then takes the rest of the week off
What do you know? Justin Trudeau actually followed through on his promise to legalize marijuana across the country! Of all his election promises, that’s probably the one that most voters expected him to ditch as soon as the votes were counted, yet here we are in the second country in the world to legalize the stuff. So, everyone not here in Canuckistan, we’ll probably be back sometime next week as we’ve got a lot of mellowing to get done…
Oh, you want a blog post? Duuuude, just take another hit.
Oh, okay, here ya go:
An Abacus Data poll released this week suggests Canadians are ready for marijuana legalization even if their governments might not be: Strong majorities of respondents in every age group and in every region said they could support or at least “accept” the framework that goes into effect Oct. 17. Even 54 per cent of Conservative voters said they could support or accept legal weed.
[…]
The resistance continues, certainly. In a special meeting on Tuesday, just days before Ontario’s municipal elections, City Council in Markham, Ont., passed a bylaw restricting marijuana smoking to private residences. It had earlier voted 12-1 in favour of “opting out” of storefront retail, as allowed for under provincial regulations.
“When you’re taking your grandmother down the street for a walk, (we don’t want you) having to be exposed to a number of individuals potentially at a street corner participating in it,” says Mayor Frank Scarpitti.
Richmond, B.C., is another refusenik jurisdiction. Mayor Malcolm Brodie notes the city took a much harsher approach than neighbouring Vancouver to the proliferation of illegal dispensaries, throwing the book at the only one that attempted to open. And he credits the provincial government with listening to municipalities’ concerns and allowing them to go their own ways
Indeed, considering the Reefer Madness-level debate, it seems somewhat remarkable how peacefully this sea change is washing over the country — and it seems the patchwork of provincial and municipal rules, much derided by Conservatives, is partly to credit for that.
A quick run-down of the new rules.
Thanks to time zones, the first legal sale of marijuana happened in Newfoundland:
One of the first customers to buy legal recreational cannabis in Canada says he has no intention of smoking, vaping or otherwise consuming the gram of weed he bought at a store in St. John’s.
Ian Power, who was first in line at one of several stores in the country’s easternmost province that opened just after midnight local time, says he plans to frame his purchase.
Hundreds of customers were lined up around the block at the private store on Water Street, the main commercial drag in the Newfoundland and Labrador capital, by the time the clock struck midnight.
A festive atmosphere broke out, with some customers lighting up on the sidewalk and motorists honking their horns in support as they drove by the crowd.
Cannabis NL expected 22 stores to open on Oct. 17, but not all opted to open in the middle of the night to commemorate the event.
Licensed marijuana producer Canopy Growth Corp. opened the Tweed-branded store in St. John’s at the late hour, while retailer Loblaw Companies Ltd. planned to start selling cannabis at its 10 locations at 9 a.m.
October 14, 2018
Brendan O’Neill: The Tyrannical Idea of “HATE SPEECH”
PhilosophyInsights
Published on 27 Aug 2017Brendan O’Neill is the editor of Spiked Online and a columnist for The Australian and The Big Issue. This is part of a discussion of hate speech at spiked‘s campus-censorship conference, The New Intolerance on Campus.
You can check out the platform of spiked here: http://www.spiked-online.com/
—
This channel aims at extracting central points of presentations into short clips. The topics cover the problems of leftist ideology and the consequences for society. The aim is to move free speech advocates forward and fight against the culture of SJWs.If you like the content, subscribe to the channel!
October 11, 2018
It’s all in the spin – “Another ‘human trafficking operation’ that wasn’t”
Elizabeth Nolan Brown on how to pitch a “human trafficking” police sweep that doesn’t actually uncover any human trafficking at all:
One hundred and twenty-three missing Michigan minors were found during a one-day “sex trafficking operation,” the New York Post reported yesterday. Similar statements showed up in other news headlines across national and international news. What the associated articles fail to mention for multiple paragraphs is that only three of the minors are even suspected of having been involved in prostitution.
Officials said the operation — a joint effort of the U.S. Marshals Service, the FBI, Michigan State Police, and multiple local Michigan police departments — identified three “possible sex-trafficking cases” among the 123 minors that were located on September 26, according to a press release.
What’s more, all but four of the “missing children” were not actually missing. In the remaining cases, minors were listed in a police database as missing but had since been found or returned home on their own. “Many were (homeschooled),” Lt. Michael Shaw told The Detroit News. “Some were runaways as well.”
The one-day “rescue” sweep was a long-time in the making, with police beforehand “investigating their whereabouts by visiting last known addresses, friend’s homes and schools.”
Nothing in the U.S. Marshals report on the operation makes mention of any arrested kidnappers, “traffickers,” or other adults involved in endangering or exploiting any of the missing minors that were identified. Which makes sense — very few missing children are actually abducted. And when runaway teens do engage in sex for money, the vast majority do not have “pimps.”
QotD: The radical, right wing US Supreme Court
We don’t have a “radical right-wing Supreme Court,” despite lots of mewing on the left to the contrary. Here are some things that would be at the top of the list for a radical right-wing Court: (1) ban abortion nationwide as a violation of the right to life protected by the due process clause; (2) rule that publicly-provided (but not funded) education is unconstitutional because it inherently involves viewpoint discrimination by the government, or at least require vouchers for those who object to the public school curriculum; (3) overrule an 1898 precedent and completely abolish birthright citizenship; (4) Use the First Amendment as a sword to require “fairness” in the left-dominated media. Not only is the Supreme Court not about to do any of things, I don’t think any of these things would even get one vote on the current Court. Moreover, merely bringing the scope of Congress’s constitutional back to where it was, say, in 1935, which was already much broader than the original meaning of the Commerce power, probably wouldn’t get more than one or two votes. What you are looking at right now is a conservative Court that will only affect society on the margins, not a “radical right-wing” Court.
David Bernstein, “WE DON’T HAVE A ‘RADICAL RIGHT-WING SUPREME COURT'”, Instapundit, 2018-10-09.
October 7, 2018
A measurable positive from the USMCA process
Michael Geist points out that one of the aspects of the son-of-NAFTA deal will be to help Canadians exercise their freedom of speech online by providing a “Safe Harbour” provision similar to the one that US law provides:
Internet free speech is not typically an issue associated with trade agreements, but a somewhat overlooked provision in the newly-minted U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) promises to safeguard freedom of expression by encouraging Internet companies to resist pressure to remove content. My Policy Options op-ed notes the USMCA’s Internet safe harbour rule – modelled on U.S. law – remedies a longstanding problem in Canada that left large Internet platforms reluctant to leave third party content such as product reviews, blog posts, and social media commentary online in the face of unsubstantiated complaints.
Once implemented, Internet companies will benefit from assurances they will not face liability for failing to take down third party content or for proactively taking action against content considered harmful or objectionable. While the safe harbour provision does not apply to intellectual property, when combined with the preservation in the deal of the USMCA protects Canada’s notice-and-notice system for copyright, whereby rights holders can file complaints over alleged infringements but there is no takedown procedure for the removal of content. Taken together, the Canadian legal framework will encourage free speech, largely looking to court orders for mandated takedowns of content or good faith efforts by platforms to address harmful content.
The absence of a Canadian safe harbour rule has meant the same companies that require court orders prior to the removal of content for claims originating in the U.S., frequently take down lawful content in Canada based on mere unproven allegations due to fears of legal liability. Further, the absence of safe harbour protections creates a disincentive for both new and established services to use Canada to store data or maintain a local presence.
The Internet safe harbour approach originates from the earliest days of the commercial Internet. In 1996, the United States enacted the Communications Decency Act, legislation designed to address two emerging concerns: the online availability of obscene materials and the liability of Internet services for hosting third party content. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down the obscenity provisions on constitutional grounds, but the safe harbour remained intact and quickly emerged as a cornerstone of U.S. Internet policy.
October 2, 2018
QotD: Legal plunder
Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Thus the beneficiaries are spared the shame and danger that their acts would otherwise involve … But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them and gives it to the other persons to whom it doesn’t belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish that law without delay — No legal plunder; this is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, harmony and logic.
Frédéric Bastiat, The Law, 1850.
September 29, 2018
The Ontario government’s amazingly sensible approach to legal cannabis
Chris Selley expresses what a lot of surprised people must be feeling after Premier Doug Ford’s government introduced startlingly mature and sensible rules for the distribution and sale of cannabis products in the province after the federal government’s legalization is enacted:
The Ontario government tabled its cannabis retail framework in the legislature on Thursday, and it only further repudiates the Frightened Communist model envisioned by the Liberals. The government will sell pot online, as before, and will maintain a monopoly on wholesaling. But the rest will be up to the private sector, under the control of the Alcohol and Gaming Commission. As it stands, there won’t even be a cap on the number of licences; a government official said Thursday they expect 500 to 1,000 applications right off the bat.
In response, OPSEU president Smokey Thomas beamed out a furious press release on behalf of his spurned members — er, sorry, on behalf of Ontario’s “municipalities and communities.”
“Unlimited stores and unlimited places to smoke will cause unlimited problems,” Thomas averred. “It’s outrageous. We’re going to become the wild west of cannabis and Sheriff Doug Ford is going to skip town, leaving communities and municipalities holding the dime bag.”
Thomas predicted Premier Ford would hand out retail pot licences to “Conservative insiders” and “corporate donors.” (Corporate donations are illegal.) He accused Ford of funnelling what by rights should be public profits into “private pockets.”
“If Ontario’s finances are truly as bad as Ford wants us to believe, why is he giving away the millions, maybe even billions, in revenue we’d get if cannabis sales were public?” he asked.
Does the government make money on cigarettes? On alcohol sold in bars and restaurants, at privately run LCBO agency stores and, of late, in supermarkets? Of course it does. Scads of it.
So it’s all quite ridiculous, as OPSEU press releases tend to be. But Thomas is not wrong when he argues the new approach is remarkably permissive. Perhaps most notably, whereas the Liberals’ proposed rules banned using marijuana in public, the PCs’ would allow you to smoke or vape it anywhere you can tobacco (though not in cars or boats). But it’s far less permissive than one might expect in other ways as well.
September 28, 2018
Ontario government lays out the path to a fully legal cannabis market
There is going to be a gap between the federal legalization date next month and the beginning of legal sales from brick-and-mortar stores in Ontario in April:
With the legalization of recreational marijuana around the corner, the Ontario government has finally answered some of the most burning questions about where residents can officially buy and smoke pot.
A day before new pot legislation is set to be tabled, The PC government announced earlier today that starting Oct. 17, weed will be up for sale at private retail pot shops by April next year.
Doing away with the cap on the number of licensed cannabis stores in the province, the government is officially taking a free-market approach to what would previously have been an LCBO monopoly under the Liberal provincial government.
[…]
Until April, cannabis will be sold exclusively online, distributed through federal wholesalers and the government’s Ontario Cannabis Store.
The Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario will be in charge of regulating the marketplace, including granting and revoking pot shop licenses.
Store owners will need to apply for a retail-operator license as well as a retail store authorization for every location they open, which will be limited to a set number, to prevent possible over-expansion, Walmart-style.
There will also be restrictions for federal cannabis growers, who will only be able to hold “a single retail license at a single production site located in Ontario,” said Ontario Attorney General Caroline Mulroney.
All currently existing pot stores who continuing to operate illegally after Oct. 17 will lose their right to ever apply for a license in the future, as will stores who have a history of dealing with organized crime and providing pot to minors.
Ontario’s new government agency, the Ontario Cannabis Retail Corp., will be in charge of handling online cannabis sales as well as wholesaling to private stores, who will potentially run the gamut from local pot shops to huge cannabis corporations.
There will be a minimum distance requirement between pot shops and schools set up in the future.
Any Ontario municipalities who don’t want pot shops on their turf — like Norfolk County in Southwestern Ontario, the first to vote no on cannabis storefronts — will have to opt out officially by Jan. 22, 2019, which they were previously barred from doing.
September 27, 2018
France moves toward the Soviet system of psychological “treatment” for dissidents
You may not agree with much that prominent French nationalist politician Marine Le Pen stands for, but the recent court order that she must undergo a psychological evaluation as part of the investigation of a “hate crime” should worry everyone. Jacob Sullum writes:
Marine Le Pen speaking in Lille during the 2017 French presidential election
Photo by Jérémy-Günther-Heinz Jähnick via Wikimedia Commons
France ranked 12 notches above the United States in this year’s World Press Freedom Index, produced by Reporters Without Borders. But such ratings can be misleading, as illustrated by the prosecution of Marine Le Pen, head of the right-wing National Rally party (formerly the National Front), for posting images of ISIS atrocities on Twitter. Last week Le Pen revealed that she had been ordered to undergo a psychiatric examination as part of the investigation into her speech crime, which added another layer of Soviet-style thought control to the story.
It is inconceivable that an American politician, no matter how extreme his views, would be prosecuted for doing what Le Pen did, because a law like the one she is charged with violating would be clearly inconsistent with the First Amendment. That law, Article 227-24 of the French Criminal Code, makes it a crime, punishable by a fine of €75,000 (about $88,000) and up to three years in prison, to distribute “a message bearing a pornographic or violent character or a character seriously violating human dignity…where the message may be seen or perceived by a minor.” Le Pen allegedly ran afoul of that prohibition in 2015 by posting three pictures of men murdered by ISIS—one beheaded, one burned alive, and one run over by a tank—in response to a Twitter user who likened her party to the terrorist organization. “Daesh [the Arabic acronym for ISIS] is this!” she tweeted.
This case vividly illustrates why Article 227-24 would never pass constitutional muster in the United States. Le Pen’s tweet is indisputably political speech, sitting at the core of the expression protected by the First Amendment. The terms of Article 227-24 (especially the phrase “seriously violating human dignity”) are broad and vague, encouraging self-censorship and inviting politically motivated prosecution of people who irk the powers that be. Le Pen, who unsuccessfully ran against Emmanuel Macron in a presidential runoff last year, was stripped of her parliamentary immunity six months later, leaving her open to prosecution.
September 26, 2018
QotD: Offensive and defensive use of the law
As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose — that it may violate property instead of protecting it — then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder.
Frédéric Bastiat, The Law, 1850.
September 20, 2018
Mind Your Business Ep. 3: Public Safety from Private Security
Foundation for Economic Education
Published on 18 Sep 2018In Detroit, dependence on law enforcement has proved insufficient to keep people safe. Enter Dale Brown, a threat management professional who specializes in stopping violence and empowering individuals to protect themselves and their loved ones.
September 13, 2018
The lasting impact of Haida Nation vs. British Columbia
I was not aware that a single case had such a major influence on relations between the federal and provincial governments on the one hand and First Nations groups on the other. Barbara Kay explains just how we got to the point of overturning decades of settled legal practice in the wake of the Haida Nation decision:
In his newly published book, There is no Difference: An Argument for the Abolition of the Indian Reserve System, lawyer Peter Best devotes a chapter to unpacking the consequences of Haida Nation. It makes for fascinating reading.
Before this decision, Best says, it was understood “that aboriginal claims and rights over the land were more than ‘reconciled.’ In fact, Canadians, Indians and non-Indians alike, thought they were, especially in treaty areas, extinguished, plain and simple,” apart from the right to hunt, fish and trap on unoccupied wilderness Crown land, and even then with Crown sovereignty. Haida Nation – and cases decided since then – reversed the meaning of the treaties.
The SCC read in an intent “merely to ‘reconcile’ Indians’ prior sovereign occupancy of the land with the new sovereignty of the Crown.” That is, they were “instruments of power and land-sharing, not instruments of rights extinguishment.”
So it seems we are now in a never-ending power-sharing arrangement, “requiring the constant, expensive, uncertain fine-tuning and adjustment from time to never-ending time of the granted Crown rights with the retained sovereign Indian rights.” This new jurisprudence, Best says, decrees a devolution of Crown sovereignty to Indians – a handing back of previously surrendered power, effectively turning Indian bands into a third order of government.
The key words, “to consult and where appropriate, accommodate the Aboriginal interests…” give Indian bands across the country power over all kinds of economic development – mines, forestry, wind power installations, roads, and of course pipelines.
Following Haida Nation, any band that asserts a proposed off-reserve project affects an Indian interest, actual or projected, the “consultation and accommodation if necessary” process is automatically launched. No evidence has to be produced, no threshold of importance to be met. (“Sacred ground” is always effective – and what ground is not sacred to aboriginals who live on it?).
In most negotiations with conflicting interests, each party has a motive to see the deal done. But “consultation” is not negotiation, and aboriginals often have no particular reason to settle. Best notes that during consultations, there’s a great deal of travel, expense account living, important meetings and pleasant busywork, with most politicians lacking the courage to utter the words “not appropriate” with regard to further “consultation.”
There is also no incentive for aboriginals to settle for anything less than exactly what they want. The Lax Kw’alaams of B.C. turned down a billion dollars in exchange for their support of an industrial project. There was no downside for them. They had the power and knew it. No matter how long they held out, their transfer payments flowed in as usual, and they took no economic risks if the project failed. If one side has nothing to lose and the other side has everything to lose, Best says, “you don’t have negotiations – you have a shakedown.”
September 10, 2018
QotD: Perversion of the law
The law perverted! The law — and, in its wake, all the collective forces of the nation — the law, I say, not only diverted from its proper direction, but made to pursue one entirely contrary! The law become the tool of every kind of avarice, instead of being its check! The law guilty of that very iniquity which it was its mission to punish! Truly, this is a serious fact, if it exists, and one to which I feel bound to call the attention of my fellow citizens.
Frédéric Bastiat, The Law, 1850.
