Quotulatiousness

October 23, 2012

The law, sexting, and shady website operations

Filed under: Britain, Law, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 14:41

Tim Worstall discusses the weird and disturbing online world of sexting teens, parasitical porn websites and the insanity of our current laws on the topic:

… the legal problems go much further than just young people losing control of images of themselves.

For we’re in the middle of a social hysteria over child pornography and paedophilia. And as is usual in such hysterias reactions desperately overshoot. For example, in my native UK it is entirely legal for a 16 year old girl to have sex with whichever consenting also 16 years or above human she wishes. Any thing from removing her top for her lover’s delectation through to any perversion you might care to think about. However, if said lover, with her full permission, takes a photograph of her without her bikini top on this is child pornography. Yes, even if they’ve been lovers for nearly two legal years a topless photograph of her at 17 and 364 days old is child porn. And it is here that the real legal problems start.

[. . .]

It gets worse, too. The general assumption in the law these days is that a picture on a computer is production of child pornography, not possession of it. The reasoning is that, before you looked at the picture there was one copy, on the server. Now, as you look at the picture, there are two. One on the server, the other in your browser (or cache, whatever). Thus there are now two pictures, you have made one of them therefore you are producing child pornography. And it’s not all that much of a surprise to find that the penalties for the production as opposed to the possession of such are markedly stronger.

Unnamed band about to get big media exposure through the “Streisand Effect”

Filed under: Business, Law, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:09

Ken at Popehat is looking for pro bono legal help for a music fan site that after years of faithful service to an unnamed band is now being “cease-and-desist”-ed by the band’s new management:

It’s time to put out the Popehat Signal on behalf of a threatened web site.

Today, I’m looking for pro bono help (or help at a modest rate) for the proprietor of a fansite for a band. The proprietor of the fansite has been running it for years, promoting the band and its appearances to its fans. Apparently the members of the band knew of this and were cool with it — until recently, when they hired new management, who used a Los Angeles area attorney to send a threatening cease-and-desist issue.

One has to assume that $BAND (or more likely the new management team) has never heard of the Streisand Effect, because they’re risking a classic case of it through this kind of action.

The Streisand effect is the phenomenon whereby an attempt to hide or remove a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely, usually facilitated by the internet. The term is a modern expression of the older phenomenon that banning or censoring something often makes that item or information more desirable, and leads to it being actively sought out to a greater extent than it would have otherwise been.

It is named after American entertainer Barbra Streisand, whose attempt in 2003 to suppress photographs of her residence inadvertently generated further publicity. Similar attempts have been made, for example, in cease-and-desist letters, to suppress numbers, files and websites. Instead of being suppressed, the information receives extensive publicity and media extensions such as videos and spoof songs, often being widely mirrored across the Internet or distributed on file-sharing networks.

The tweet police are watching you

Filed under: Britain, Law, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:27

In sp!ked, Patrick Hayes points out that you don’t need to agree with — or have any sympathy for — BNP party leader Nick Griffin to recognize that the “twitch-hunt” against him is a very bad sign for all of us:

Nick Griffin, leader of the far-right British National Party (BNP), currently has 19,356 followers on Twitter. Given the events of the past week, it seems many of these are not following Griffin because they enjoy his rants on anything from fracking to Islamists. Rather, the majority are following him in order to monitor his newsfeed, seemingly just waiting for an opportunity to report him to the police for offensive tweets.

[. . .]

Without doubt, tweeting the address of a gay couple, and threatening to give them ‘a bit of drama’ in the form of a demonstration, is an idiotic thing to do. But did anyone really think that a militant wing of the BNP was going to swoop down to Huntingdon and pay the sixtysomething gay couple a visit? Certainly not the couple themselves, whose chilled-out approach — as Brendan O’Neill has pointed out in his Telegraph blog — contrasts sharply with the hysteria of the Twittermob. Any demo, the couple said, would be a ‘damp squib’. Furthermore, ‘it would be difficult for people to gather as we live in a small village and there’s nowhere to park’.

Such cool reasoning was not shared by members of the Twittersphere, or by some gay-rights campaigners. In the words of a spokesperson for gay-rights group Stonewall, Griffin’s behaviour was ‘beyond words, unbelievably shocking. It is a real example of the hatred still out there towards gay people.’

‘Out there’ — it is a revealing phrase. It seems that this Twitter-stoked furore is not just about the loon Griffin, who has for many years developed notoriety for spouting offensive rubbish. It speaks also to the fear of some sort of silent, bigoted majority that Griffin supposedly represents. All it takes, it seems, is a tweet from Fuhrer Griffin and the gay-bashing hordes will arise. They won’t, of course, because they don’t exist. Yet, that someone widely known as a bit of a nutjob is seen as a ‘real example’ of hatred towards gays says more about a culture of offence-seeking than actual attitudes towards homosexuals in twenty-first century Britain.

October 18, 2012

Reason.tv: Are We In the Final Days of Marijuana Prohibition?

Filed under: Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 16:44

“There’ a rising tide of acceptance of the fact that people are going to smoke marijuana, and it’s like the prohibition against alcohol in the 1930s. There’s a recognition that perhaps the laws are causing more harm than the drugs themselves,” says Rick Steves, author and travel host.

Steves and others attended “The Final Days of Prohibition” conference in downtown Los Angeles in early October. The conference was put on by the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), and Reason TV was on the scene to ask about the future of marijuana laws in the U.S., particularly in the upcoming election where the states of Oregon, Washington, and Colorado all have marijuana legalization initiatives on the ballot.

Taking “blaming the victim” to school

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Education, Law, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:21

The incident would probably make newspaper headlines anyway — “Middle school students find picture of topless teacher on school iPad” — but only in a crazy world are the kids punished for the teacher’s goof-up:

Some students at Highland Middle School in Anderson, Ind., got a peek of their teacher’s bare breasts on a school-issued iPad while in class.

Those students have been suspended and threatened with expulsion.

The school district said it has taken action against the teacher, but they wouldn’t specify what action, only that she is still a member of the school staff.

“The picture showed up of the teacher topless,” said Joshua Troutt, 13, describing the incident that occurred at Highland Middle School.

He and three other students were in their classroom, playing a game on a school-issued iPad.

He said one of the students pressed a button, and a photograph with his teacher’s bare chest was revealed.

“It’s not our fault that she had the photo on there,” Troutt said. “We couldn’t do anything not to look at it, if it just popped up when he pressed the button. It was her fault that she had the photo on there. Her iPhone synched to it. She had to have pressed something to make all of her photos synch on there.”

In which insane universe is this the kids’ fault?

The rise of Britain’s cybercensors

Filed under: Britain, Law, Liberty, Media, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:01

Brendan O’Neill in Reason on the sad state of online freedom of speech in Britain:

What country has just sentenced a man to eight months in prison for wearing an anti-police t-shirt, and another man to three months in prison for telling an “abhorrent” joke on Facebook? Iran, perhaps? China? No, it’s Britain.

Something has gone horribly wrong in Britain in recent years. The birthplace of John Milton (“Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience”), and John Stuart Mill (“Every man who says frankly and fully what he thinks is so far doing a public service”), has become a cesspit of censoriousness.

The frequency with which the police and legal system now throw into jail anyone judged to have committed a “speech crime” is alarming.

On October 11, Barry Thew, a 39-year-old man from Manchester, was sentenced to eight months in jail—eight months!—for the crime of wearing a t-shirt that said, “One less pig — perfect justice”.

[. . .]

Social-networking sites are being subjected to the most stringent censorship. In July, a 17-year-old boy was arrested and questioned by police after he sent insulting tweets to British Olympic diver Tom Daley. The 17-year-old was spared jail but was issued with a “harassment warning.” In March, a 21-year-old student called Liam Stacey was sentenced to 56 days in jail for making crude jokes on Twitter about a then very ill footballer called Fabrice Muamba.

Last year, following the summer riots that rocked many English cities, two young men were jailed for four years for setting up a Facebook page called “Smash Down Northwich Town,” a reference to the town in Chester where they lived. The page was all about how cool it would be to have a local riot. No one accepted their invitation to riot, though; there was no “smashing down.” Yet still the two men were convicted of a public order offense, criminalized for being fantasists effectively.

Update: Rowan Atkinson is calling for the censors to back off:

Rowan Atkinson is demanding a change in the law to halt the ‘creeping culture of censoriousness’ which has seen the arrest of a Christian preacher, a critic of Scientology and even a student making a joke.

The Blackadder and Mr Bean star criticised the ‘new intolerance’ behind controversial legislation which outlaws ‘insulting words and behaviour’.

Launching a fight for part of the Public Order Act to be repealed, he said it was having a ‘chilling effect on free expression and free protest’.

He went on: ‘The clear problem of the outlawing of insult is that too many things can be interpreted as such. Criticism, ridicule, sarcasm, merely stating an alternative point of view to the orthodoxy, can be interpreted as insult.’

October 15, 2012

A “violence tax” that would only fall on the non-violent

Filed under: Law, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:40

Steve Chapman on a recent proposal that will penalize the non-violent for violence in their community:

For urban politicians, gun control is like the bar in Cheers — a place of refuge they can seek out whenever things aren’t going well. Things aren’t going well on the crime front in Chicago, with homicides up 25 percent this year. So what else can our elected leaders do but promise action against guns?

Action against the possession and use of guns by violent felons would be a good idea, but the proposal offered by Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle is something else: a penalty on nonviolent citizens who bear no blame for the carnage.

Preckwinkle suggested a tax on sales of firearms and ammunition, with the goal of defraying the costs that gunshots create for the county hospital and jail. Her spokesperson couldn’t say what the tax rate would be or how much revenue it would yield but said the fee would be “consistent with our commitment to pursuing violence reduction in the city and in the county.”

[. . .]

The levy was dubbed a “violence tax,” which is exactly what it isn’t. It would not target criminals who have malice in mind, but would fall entirely on the law-abiding.

Anyone convicted of a felony, after all, is ineligible for an Illinois Firearm Owner’s Card, which is legally required to buy guns or bullets. Under federal law, felons are barred from owning guns. So ex-con gang members would not pay the tax, because they make all their purchases in the illegal market. It would hit only those gun owners who have used their firearms responsibly.

October 10, 2012

Defending the rights of the accused (even when the accused are “clearly guilty”)

Filed under: Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:41

Ken White doesn’t like the way the criminal justice system is criticized on the basis of “feelings”, rather than the facts. In a recent case that the media has reported on as a travesty of justice, he defends the process by which the decision was reached.

Blogger “Gideon” writes at A Public Defender and is, in fact, a public defender. That is to say, Gideon works every day under lousy conditions, inadequate funding, and impossible odds to provide a vigorous defense to people accused of crimes who can’t afford a lawyer — people who, absent vigorous representation, will be ground up by the system, guilty or innocent. God bless Gideon for that. Gideon has been waging a lonely battle to explain what Fourtin v. Connecticut actually means.

As Gideon explains at length […], prosecutors made the strange and probably incompetent tactical decision to charge Fourtin under an infrequently used subsection of the Connecticut rape statute, a subsection that only applies to sexual assault of someone who is “physically helpless.” What the Supreme Court of Connecticut found was not that “if a severely handicapped person could resist but doesn’t, its not rape.” What the Court found was that this victim — who, though severely handicapped, could move and resist — was not “physically helpless” within the meaning of the statute, which is narrowly confined to people who are “unconscious or for some other reason physically unable to communicate lack of consent.” The Court found that the evidence showed that the victim could communicate lack of consent, and thus wasn’t “physically helpless” under the statute. The Court also repeatedly criticized the prosecutor’s decision to charge the case under this particular statute (rather than, for instance, under another subsection that could have applied because the victim was so mentally impaired that she was “unable to consent to such sexual intercourse”), and failure to offer evidence of state’s latecoming theories under this statute.

I’m outraged that the prosecution made a lousy and seemingly inexplicable call. I’m outraged that someone who sexually assaulted a profoundly handicapped woman goes free because of incompetence. But I’m not outraged that the state has to prove that you’re guilty of the specific crime you’re charged with to put you in prison. That’s fundamental to due process. “Well, hell, he didn’t do what he’s charged with, but he did something else awful” is tyrannical. I’m more afraid of the state’s ability to make it up as they go along in a criminal case than I am of criminals going free. As a criminal defense attorney, I know that it would be impossible to defend clients if the government could throw on their case and then ask the judge to find a statute that fits, instead of charging defendants with a specific crime and then proving that crime. As Gideon points out, the Sixth Amendment gives you the right “to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation” against you. “You’re a criminal, we’ll figure out what statute you violated after we see how the evidence turns out at trial” is not due process.

October 8, 2012

Legal weapons of mass destruction

Filed under: Business, Law, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:19

Software patents: two words that probably should not go together at all.

Mr. Phillips and Vlingo are among the thousands of executives and companies caught in a software patent system that federal judges, economists, policy makers and technology executives say is so flawed that it often stymies innovation.

Alongside the impressive technological advances of the last two decades, they argue, a pall has descended: the marketplace for new ideas has been corrupted by software patents used as destructive weapons.

[. . .]

Patents are vitally important to protecting intellectual property. Plenty of creativity occurs within the technology industry, and without patents, executives say they could never justify spending fortunes on new products. And academics say that some aspects of the patent system, like protections for pharmaceuticals, often function smoothly.

However, many people argue that the nation’s patent rules, intended for a mechanical world, are inadequate in today’s digital marketplace. Unlike patents for new drug formulas, patents on software often effectively grant ownership of concepts, rather than tangible creations. Today, the patent office routinely approves patents that describe vague algorithms or business methods, like a software system for calculating online prices, without patent examiners demanding specifics about how those calculations occur or how the software operates.

As a result, some patents are so broad that they allow patent holders to claim sweeping ownership of seemingly unrelated products built by others. Often, companies are sued for violating patents they never knew existed or never dreamed might apply to their creations, at a cost shouldered by consumers in the form of higher prices and fewer choices.

October 5, 2012

Apparently only Christians go to prison in Canada

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Religion — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:29

At least, that’s the most charitable interpretation of this move by the federal government:

The federal government is cancelling the contracts of non-Christian chaplains at federal prisons, CBC News has learned.

Inmates of other faiths, such as Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists and Jews, will be expected to turn to Christian prison chaplains for religious counsel and guidance, according to the office of Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, who is also responsible for Canada’s penitentiaries.

Toews made headlines in September when he ordered the cancellation of a tender issued for a Wiccan priest for federal prisons in B.C.

Toews said he wasn’t convinced part-time chaplains from other religions were an appropriate use of taxpayer money and that he would review the policy.

In an email to CBC News, Toews’ office says that as a result of the review, the part-time non-Christian chaplains will be let go and the remaining full-time chaplains in prisons will now provide interfaith services and counselling to all inmates.

According to the report, 57% of inmates are Christian. I smell a charter challenge to this ruling.

October 4, 2012

Claim: more women die of domestic violence than cancer

Filed under: Law, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:43

A friend of mine posted this claim on Twitter earlier today and it struck me as being incredibly unlikely. A quick Google search turns up the following numbers for causes of death in the United States in 2009 (total 2,437,163):

  • Heart disease: 599,413
  • Cancer: 567,628
  • Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 137,353
  • Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 128,842
  • Accidents (unintentional injuries): 118,021
  • Alzheimer’s disease: 79,003
  • Diabetes: 68,705
  • Influenza and Pneumonia: 53,692
  • Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 48,935
  • Intentional self-harm (suicide): 36,909

If we assume that exactly half the reported deaths from cancer are women, that says 283,814 women died of various forms of cancer in 2009. How does that stack up against the murder statistics (which would include domestic violence along with all other killings)?

13,636

One of these numbers is not like the other (and of the reported 13,636 homicides, 77% of the victims were male).

This is not to diminish the dangers of domestic violence, but throwing out numbers as my friend did doesn’t actually help the situation.

October 3, 2012

“The stereotype is so strong, that when you look at the actual data, you’re shocked”

Filed under: Cancon, Law — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:26

In the National Post, Tom Blackwell finds the common stereotype on domestic violence at variance with the facts:

Conventional wisdom suggests that women usually kill their spouses in self defence or as a final, desperate reaction to chronic battery, the burning-bed syndrome that is sometimes cited as a defence in murder trials. A new Canadian study, however, suggests that barely a quarter of husband-killers are victims of domestic abuse, less than half suffer from any identified psychological problem, and fewer still have had trouble with police.

[. . .]

To Don Dutton, a UBC psychology professor who has examined domestic violence for decades, the results of the new study are no surprise, despite what he called an erroneous understanding of “intimate-partner” assault that continues to prevail in society.

“We’ve got a stereoptye about domestic violence … that the oppressor or perpetrator is the male and when female violence happens, it’s a reaction against male violence,” he said. “The stereotype is so strong, that when you look at the actual data, you’re shocked.”

Prof. Dutton, author of the book Rethinking Domestic Violence, suggested that such assumptions evolved from the feminist view that family violence was a socio-political act of “patriarchal men suppressing women.” He argues instead that personality disorders in both male and female offenders better explain family violence than do social norms.

Prof. Dutton, not involved in the Quebec research, cited a number of studies in the United States that concluded the most common type of domestic violence was not abuse of women by men, but “bilateral” violence where both spouses hurt each other with similar severity.

October 2, 2012

Making a case to abolish the patent system

Filed under: Law, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:54

At Techdirt, Mike Masnick summarizes a recent study of the benefits and drawbacks of the current patent system:

Over at The Atlantic, Jordan Weissmann has a great article covering the latest paper from economists Michele Boldrin and David Levine […], which argues why it might make sense to abolish the patent system entirely, even while admitting that patents may have some benefits in some cases. You can read the full paper here (pdf) where it makes “the case against patents.” While this may sound similar to Boldrin and Levine’s earlier works, this one goes further, and is definitely worth the read. In effect, they argue that not only do patents rarely help innovation, but, even worse, the existence of patents (even where they help) will only lead to the system being expanded to where they do more harm than good:

    The initial eruption of small and large innovations leading to the creation of a new industry — from chemicals to cars, from radio and TV to personal computers and investment banking — is seldom, if ever, born out of patent protection and is, instead, the fruits of highly competitive-cooperative environments. It is only after the initial stages of explosive innovation and rampant growth end that mature industries turn toward the legal protection of patents, usually because their internal grow potential diminishes and the industry structure become concentrated.

    A closer look at the historical and international evidence suggests that while weak patent systems may mildly increase innovation with limited side-effects, strong patent systems retard innovation with many negative side-effects. Both theoretically and empirically, the political economy of government operated patent systems indicates that weak legislation will generally evolve into a strong protection and that the political demand for stronger patent protection comes from old and stagnant industries and firms, not from new and innovative ones. Hence the best solution is to abolish patents entirely through strong constitutional measures and to find other legislative instruments, less open to lobbying and rent-seeking, to foster innovation whenever there is clear evidence that laissez-faire under-supplies it.

October 1, 2012

Michigan’s unions battle for a veto right over state law

Filed under: Government, Law, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:10

In the Wall Street Journal, Shikha Dalmia looks at a proposed constitutional amendment in Michigan which would give unions a huge veto power over state law:

The Michigan Supreme Court recently approved the placement of a proposed constitutional amendment on the November ballot. If passed by voters, the so-called Protect Our Jobs amendment would give public-employee unions a potent new tool to challenge any laws — past, present or future — that limit their benefits or collective-bargaining powers. It would also bar Michigan from becoming a right-to-work state in which mandatory union dues are not a condition of employment. The budget implications are dire.

[. . .]

The amendment says that no “existing or future laws shall abridge, impair or limit” the collective-bargaining rights of Michigan workers. That may sound innocuous, but according to Patrick Wright of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, the amendment would hand a broad mandate to unions to challenge virtually any law they don’t like.

[. . .]

The ballot initiative states that it would “override state laws that regulate hours and conditions of employment to the extent that those laws conflict with collective bargaining agreements.” In other words, collective-bargaining agreements negotiated behind closed doors would trump the legislature — a breathtaking power grab that would turn unions into a super legislature.

Perhaps the biggest upside for unions is that the proposal would prohibit Michigan from becoming a right-to-work state. Regaining its competitive position with respect to the 23 right-to-work states that have become attractive to manufacturers, even auto makers, would be unlikely. Rather, labor would get a field-tested strategy for scrapping those states’ right-to-work laws with ballot referendums.

Warren Ellis: Blasphemy charges are the modern replacement for libel suits

Filed under: Law, Media, Religion — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:55

In his weekly column in Vice, Warren Ellis explains why we should expect to see much more activity filed under “blasphemy” than “libel” going forward:

All sides of a society can agree that speech should be free. Until, of course, it isn’t. George W Bush famously said, “There ought to be limits to freedom.” It’s the right to free speech until you say something that some people really don’t like. Often, something that the offended parties find it really hard to criminalise. It’s not quite as easy as it used to be to get libel, slander or malicious communication charges to stick to uncomfortable statements. Luckily for the uncomfortable, conservative countries have an ancient recourse. Something that was invented many thousands of years ago for the express purpose of keeping the uppity in line. Since summer, it’s been used in Russia as a political lever to shut people up, and in Greece too.

Blasphemy. The act of insulting something regarded as holy. Thomas Aquinas characterised it as “a sin against God”. He was big on the idea that sinners needed to be killed, was our Thomas, with the ethical caveat/fig-leaf that it should be secular courts that saw people “exterminated” so that the Church could pretend to have clean hands. Because, apparently, a god is not such a big thing that it cannot be made to feel sad.

Of course, the gods and prophets don’t even notice. The latter are dead and the former never showed any signs of life. Blasphemy, like heresy, is thoughtcrime: a questioning of institutions, authority structures and the way we live. When I wipe shit on the face of your god, I’m not doing it to your god – I’m doing it to you, because it’s you who serve it and you who use it as justification of your position. It’s a political act. It does, however, allow the state to pick up one of its most ancient weapons.

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