European Court Finds Copyright Doesn't Automatically Trump Freedom Of Expression 214
First time accepted submitter admiral snackbar writes "The European Court of Human Rights has declared that the copyright monopoly stands in direct conflict with fundamental Human Rights, as defined in the European Union and elsewhere. 'For the first time in a judgment on the merits, the European Court of Human Rights has clarified that a conviction based on copyright law for illegally reproducing or publicly communicating copyright protected material can be regarded as an interference with the right of freedom of expression and information under Article 10 of the European Convention [on Human Rights]. Such interference must be in accordance with the three conditions enshrined in the second paragraph of Article 10 of the Convention. This means that a conviction or any other judicial decision based on copyright law, restricting a person's or an organization's freedom of expression, must be pertinently motivated as being necessary in a democratic society, apart from being prescribed by law and pursuing a legitimate aim.'"
At last! (Score:5, Insightful)
I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more (Score:2)
I wake up every morning
hold my hands and pray for rain
I've got a head full of ideas
driving me insane
It's a shame the way she makes me scrub the floor
well, I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more
Re:At last! (Score:4, Insightful)
"I, for one, welcome our new european overlords!"
This is nothing terribly new. Notice that it does NOT say that the concept of Copyrights is inimical to freedom of expression, it says that under certain defined circumstances, copyright CAN interfere with freedom of expression.
The U.S. has long recognized this: it's called "fair use".
So if you're looking for some kind of revamping of U.S. copyrights a a result of this, you're probably dreaming.
What? (Score:2)
What?
An organisation has freedom of expression?
That's not good. It's members maybe, but an abstract legal entity?
Re:What? (Score:4, Insightful)
Could you explain why you think it's not good?
Would you like to see political groups broken up for saying something that an individual would have been fine saying? It's happened all over the world in the past - the "legally elected government" cracking down on opposition parties simply because they oppose them, I'd say protecting the right of any organisation to express rational opposition to another is absolutely a requirement of civilised society.
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I will defend to the death the absolute right of Fox News to talk bull****!
Or I would if I actually lived in America, we don't have TV like that in the UK. That sort of rhetoric gets buried in the columns of disreputable newspapers like the Daily Fail. *cough* Mail.
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'Daily Wail' is also acceptable.
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An organisation has freedom of expression?
I'm not sure about this, but an organization might not be regarded as a legal person in EU law. (It certainly isn't in tax law: corporations are taxed using a completely separate set of taxes to actual people.) That said, it would also be wrong to restrict organizations except in accordance with the other basic principles from having freedom of (collective) speech. That is, all restrictions have to be necessary to support democractic society, as prescribed in law, and following a legitimate aim (the aims th
Eat me, Euroskeptics! (Score:5, Insightful)
While the EU has had a lot of criticism (some of it justified) for it's costs, it's impenetrable bureaucracy, and it's tendency to focus on the minutia rather than bigger problems, I think that it would be impossible to practically enact vital laws and opinions such as this on an international scale without it. Big government may be out of fashion on the other side of the pond, but it certainly has it's merits over here (where our governmental needs are different) and this kind of check against the increasing pressure and influence of fanatical commercial interests on the interpretation and drafting of legislation is exactly what we need right now to restore a little sanity to the situation.
Re:Eat me, Euroskeptics! (Score:4, Informative)
While I agree with your main point, this ruling is from the European Court of Human Rights which is not an EU institution. All member states of the EU, and indeed the EU itself, is bound by the European Convention on Human Rights -- but so are several other countries that are not EU member states.
Re:Eat me, Euroskeptics! (Score:5, Informative)
Just for some thoughts, quote: "The Convention prohibits in particular: torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, slavery and forced labour, death penalty, arbitrary and unlawful detention, and discrimination in the enjoyment of the rights and freedoms set out in the Convention."
(to be found at http://www.echr.coe.int/ECHR/EN/Header/The+Court/Introduction/Information+documents/ [coe.int] )
How is that in the US of A?
CC.
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From Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Court_of_Human_Rights ):
"The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR; French: Cour européenne des droits de l’homme) in Strasbourg, France is a supra-national court established by the European Convention on Human Rights. ... . The court, as is also the Council Of Europe, is not part and is a completely separate body from the European Union and its court, the European Court of Justice. The latter is based in Luxembourg."
Therefore, it has nothin
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Re:Eat me, Euroskeptics! (Score:5, Informative)
Wikipedia: "With a combined population of over 500 million inhabitants, or 7.3% of the world population, the EU, in 2011, generated the largest nominal world gross domestic product (GDP) of 17.6 trillion US dollars, representing approximately 20% of the global GDP when measured in terms of purchasing power parity."
CC.
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The EU isn't that big.
If it were a country, it would be the 7th largest in the world. It has the largest GDP in the world and 503 million inhabitants, making it the third largest in population.
What the fuck are you talking about?
Re:Eat me, Euroskeptics! (Score:4, Informative)
While the EU has had a lot of criticism (some of it justified) for it's costs, it's impenetrable bureaucracy, and it's tendency to focus on the minutia rather than bigger problems, I think that it would be impossible to practically enact vital laws and opinions such as this on an international scale without it.
An ironic comment, given that this ruling was made by the European Court of Human Rights, which is not a part of the EU machinery (and in fact applies in far more countries and has been around for far longer).
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The European Court of Human Rights is NOT part of EU. Its an independent court.
So your yelp at EU sceptics is way out of line. Given the decisions from the EU Court I can only say its my opinion that it would naver have reached the same decision. Its very pro-EU.
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This European ruling is still more limited than US fair use rights, and the entire repressive copyright regime was created by international organizations in the first place, mainly driven by Europeans.
Instead if being an example of the benefits of big government, this is an example of big government passing more laws to fix problems that it itself created.
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No, but the Berne Convention was, and it started the trend of too-fucking-long copyright terms.
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Not sure what happened there - a total typing fail followed by a re-reading brain fart seems the most likely combination at this time. ;)
Re:Eat me, Euroskeptics! (Score:5, Informative)
It's simple really. Just remember that the apostrophe ALWAYS represents one or more letters having between removed. In the case of the possessive, it's due to a missing "e" that used to be used (the possessive form was made with "es" - e.g. "Peter's cat" really represents "Peteres cat"). This is quite visible in other Germanic languages, but quite hidden in English due to the weird history of our language.
In the case of the possessive "its", it was never written "ites" and therefore does not receive an apostrophe. Similarly, "his" and "her" also never had the "es" ending and therefore also do not contain an apostrophe.
"It's" contains an apostrophe for the missing "i" from "it is" (or in some cases the missing "ha" from "it has") and so it becomes very clear that the apostrophe is required.
If all that is too confusing or simply too hard to remember, relate things back to "his" and "her". You can grammatically replace "its" with "his" and still make sense, so it similarly doesn't take an apostrophe ("Its impenetrable bureaucracy" -> "His impenetrable bureaucracy" (no problem)). "It's" on the other hand can never be grammatically replaced by "his" ("It's got impenetrable bureaucracy" -> "His got impenetrable bureaucracy" (meaningless)).
The alternative (and more common, but less obvious to me personally) method is to go the other way around and mentally try replacing "its"/"it's" with "it is" to see if that fits.
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What is visible is that "Peter's cat", "Dog's bollocks", "Land's End" and so forth all have apostrophes, but "its omission" doesn't.
Well yes, but nor do "his cat", "her friend" or "their father". I don't see how "its" gets treated as the odd one out in this scenario.
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Just remember that the apostrophe ALWAYS represents one or more letters having between removed.
Except for when it doesn't.
Chris has a cat. It's Chris's cat.
I don't see anything there that violates what I just said...
Except for when it does not.
Chris has a cat. It is Chrises cat.
Details (Score:5, Informative)
TFA is crap, but links to a post with more details. [blogspot.com]
the applicants were Robert Ashby Donald, Marcio Madeira Moraes and Olivier Claisse, respectively an American, a Brazilian and a French national living in New-York, Paris and Le Perreux-sur-Marne. All three are fashion photographers. The case concerned their conviction in France for copyright infringement following the publication of pictures on the Internet site Viewfinder of a fashion company run by Mr. Donald and Mr. Moraes. The photos were taken by Mr. Claisse at fashion shows in Paris in 2003 and published without the permission of the fashion houses. The three fashion photographers were ordered by the Court of Appeal of Paris to pay fines between 3.000 and 8.000 euro and an award of damages to the French design clothing Federation and five fashion houses, all together amounting to 255.000 euro
Notably,
In the case of Ashby Donald and others v. France the European Court of Human Rights did not need to undertake itself such a balancing exercise, as it found that the French judicial authorities have done this exercise in a proper way. As the Court stated, it saw no reason to disagree with the findings by the French courts
I.e., the ruling didn't do squat to help the defendants in this case.
Re:Details (Score:5, Interesting)
No, because it was a purely commericial issue.
The clarification of the court concerns things like leaked documents that trigger a political scandal, which in the past have been successfully taken down on copyright grounds. The court has made it clear that it intends to stop this practice.
It is interesting that the court felt the need to clarify this issue even though it had no bearing on the case at hand.
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It is interesting that the court felt the need to clarify this issue even though it had no bearing on the case at hand.
It's interesting because they're obviously interested in not accidentally (or otherwise) limiting freedom by issuing a bad ruling. They made it clear why they were doing what they were doing. This doesn't change the law unless they already have no fair use law.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Explains a lot (Score:5, Insightful)
Human rights and (rightwing politics, elite interests) of all colours generally don't get along.
Sometimes in the effects, but not in the causes.
For example, libertarians are usually all for human rights. What they are against are the "human duties" that come with many of those rights. So, as long as the right is something like "an human has a right to pursue happiness", that's fine. If it says "a man has a right to be happy", and this means someone else having the obligation to make him happy, not so much.
Conservatives, on the other hand, generally aren't agains the rights themselves, but they have serious issues with the hierarchy of said rights. For example, abortion. A conservative (a western one at least) does think a woman should have right over her own body. If he didn't think so he'd be against anti-rape laws, which are entirely based on the right for a women to decide who she lets or doesn't let inside her body. What he doesn't agree with is that said right be placed above a human (fetus or not) right to live. Which in turn they don't think should be placed above the right of society to kill those humans who threaten it the most.
It should be noted too that, from the perspective of many rightwingers, it's the left that doesn't respect many human rights, such as the right to fully express one's own personal beliefs wherever one is just because of one's profession by, for example, forcing one to remove religious symbols from one's work desk or wall.
Gray areas. This theme is full of them.
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Conservatives, on the other hand, generally aren't agains the rights themselves, but they have serious issues with the hierarchy of said rights. For example, abortion. A conservative (a western one at least) does think a woman should have right over her own body. If he didn't think so he'd be against anti-rape laws, which are entirely based on the right for a women to decide who she lets or doesn't let inside her body. What he doesn't agree with is that said right be placed above a human (fetus or not) right to live. Which in turn they don't think should be placed above the right of society to kill those humans who threaten it the most.
Well no, that's a lot of bullshit. What he doesn't agree with is that a fetus is not the same as a person.
Re:Explains a lot (Score:4, Interesting)
Well no, that's a lot of bullshit. What he doesn't agree with is that a fetus is not the same as a person.
The argument doesn't rely on that. If we are distinguish a fetus from a person, it's still a matter of an hierarchy of values. IMHO, it'd look roughly like this (subject to lots of refinements):
a) Liberal: person life > women rights over body > killing society threatening life > fetus life
b) Libertarian (typical): women rights over body > person life > killing society threatening life > fetus life
c) Conservative (typical): killing society threatening life > person life > fetus life > women rights over body
d) Conservative (Catholic): fetus life > killing society threatening life > person life > women rights over body
And so on and so forth. Mix and match to find other minor political ideologies.
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The argument doesn't rely on that. If we are distinguish a fetus from a person, it's still a matter of an hierarchy of values.
You're still attempting to reframe the debate with typical bullshit tactics the same as the douchewad that I was talking to about some property he owns (inherited, did not earn) and he spits out "the problem with this country is that we're still killing babies". We all know that you claim the right to define what is or is not a lifeform, and THAT is what this debate is about.
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We all know that you claim the right to define what is or is not a lifeform, and THAT is what this debate is about.
Actually, I don't. My own personal position is that I'm against abortion because I don't know whether a fetus is or isn't a person, or at which point he/she/it becomes one. If I don't know, the only rational course of action for me is to not kill the fetus, since by killing he/she/it I might be killing a human person by mistake.
I guess a reasonable threshold of risk would be a 99.999+% chance of a specific fetus not being a person. But calculating that is all but impossible, hence not killing he/she/it is t
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I see absolutely no proposals from the pro-life crowd about what to do with an unwanted pregnancy after it does, in fact, become a viable human life outside of the mother's body.
True, but it at least open possibilities, while the alternative closes them. In any case, if an allowed to born person decides she absolutely isn't enjoying existing, she can always pursue suicide herself. That solves her own problem (in a way, at least), while not necessarily subjecting the other "allowed-to-borners" the same. The fact that most unwanted children chose to stay alive rather than suiciding is statistically significant enough, IMHO, for this data point to be taken into consideration. Were a s
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This is an important point. While religion tends to point to souls or supernaturally donated characteristics to denote personhood, you don't need a recourse to the supernatural to understand that the foundation of human rights is the broadest possible application of rights to anything that could be conceivably considered "human".
While a fetus does not share the complete faculties of an adult, or even a birthed child, the differences between an adult and an air-breathing infant and a fetus are more on a con
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It should be noted too that, from the perspective of many rightwingers, it's the left that doesn't respect many human rights, such as the right to fully express one's own personal beliefs wherever one is just because of one's profession by, for example, forcing one to remove religious symbols from one's work desk or wall.
The problem here is (often) that these people are all for expressing their own beliefs, but don't spent a thought on how that affects other peoples freedoms.
No freedom is really unlimited. They all find bounds where other people come into play. And with most of us living in a society with other people, that happens sooner rather than later.
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It should be noted too that, from the perspective of many rightwingers, it's the left that doesn't respect many human rights, such as the right to fully express one's own personal beliefs wherever one is just because of one's profession by, for example, forcing one to remove religious symbols from one's work desk or wall.
The problem here is (often) that these people are all for expressing their own beliefs, but don't spent a thought on how that affects other peoples freedoms.
Nonsense. Any time you find yourself believing that your political opponents (who comprise tens or hundreds of millions of people from all walks of life) have simply failed to consider some huge aspect of the debate, you're wrong. When you dig into it you'll find that your opponents' positions are rational and reasonable, but based on different axioms than your own. Exploring the underlying differences rarely changes anyones' positions, but is often enlightening.
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That's not true at all. Right-wing is about civil liberties and personal freedoms and responsibilities. Left-wing is about granting control to the government for them to act in the best interest of everyone. (e.g. "The left" will increase taxes, because the government thinks they should be able to take someone's money and give it to who they think deserves it. Lefties also make laws that might restrict freedom for the "greater good" - an example is the ban on rare-earth magnet toys in many countries.)
Corpor
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Because the right isn't just one ideology. The political right and religious right are often in conflict, but they are kept unified because they know they need each other to defeat their mutual enemies.
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> Why does the right wing support things like the TSA and marijuana prohibition?
I think this comment is an insight into your *perception* of conservatives, rather than what we actually believe. In particular, if you read the right-wing sites and blogs, you'll see that most of us *HATE* the TSA. Passionately. From Breitbart to Drudge to you name it. (And for the record, were complaining loudly even when Bush was in office.)
This shows me that you don't regularly read what we're actually saying. Instead, yo
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It's not a "no true scotsman" fallacy to say "actually, they don't". George Bush supports the TSA. That doesn't mean that "the right" supports the TSA, it means that politicians interested in political patronage support the TSA.
Opposition to marijuana prohibition is less common among the right, but common enough that it's false to say that "the right supports marijuana prohibition".
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Its easy to become confused. Both sides talk about rights. The difference been a libertarian and your typical leftist comes down to where the obligations lay.
The libertarian believes everyone has a right to any health care need or want, but to him the meaning of that is nobody should stop anyone from having procedures performed.
The leftist believes everyone has a right to health care based on need, and its societies job to ensure they get it.
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Except if you call liberitarians anarchists, then they want the rule of law and its society's job to ensure there is one - at least I don't hear much of private vigilante services as an option. Most people are the same, they want to cut all government services they don't themselves need. They have their health and their health insurance, everyone else tough luck. Of course there's lifestyle-related health issues too but a lot of it is a lottery, first you figure out if you're a winner or a loser then you de
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Except if you call liberitarians anarchists, then they want the rule of law and its society's job to ensure there is one - at least I don't hear much of private vigilante services as an option.
It sounds like you haven't been listening very closely. Privately-funded defense is the only option consistent with the Non-Aggression Principle. Any "libertarian" who speaks of it being "society's job" to do anything is entertaining a contradiction.
(To be fair, you would have to look beyond the U.S. Libertarian Party to get an idea of what consistent libertarianism looks like; but then, the LP's goal is achieve political influence, which is basically the opposite of everything they supposedly stand for, so
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And the libertarian will also point out that the leftist's notion of societal duty is code for a collective right to confiscate the individual's goods and restrict the individual's freedom by force of arms, in whatever way the collective decides is appropriate.
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Does American politics have a left side?
Re:Explains a lot (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know why, the MAFIAA and artists are generally very left-wing.
Only from a US (and to a somewhat lesser extent, UK) point of view. Remember that "left" from a (mainland) European perspective is generally viewed as significantly further left of "left" from a US perspective. Some policies of the US left are seen as draconianly "right" by many Europeans.
It tends to be the case that in Europe, the word "liberal" still contains the core meaning of the word "liberty". It's definitely a moderated and controlled liberty (so, not "libertarian") but the goal is to promote as much freedom as possible for the greatest number of people.
This is the case whether you agree or disagree with HOW it is done (e.g. higher taxes may seem to be the opposite of "liberty"; but it's viewed in context of using the money to promote the liberty of those who have less without impinging TOO greatly on those who have more, increasing the baseline liberty enjoyed by citizens overall (remembering for an extreme case of the opposite that in a Dictatorship, the Dictator himself has "complete liberty" at the expense of all others; this represents the most possible liberty for one; but the least for the population as a whole. At a lesser scale, the US at present provides a high level of liberty for those of moderate to high income, but less for those that are in the lowest income classes)).
In my understanding, the US left tend to be more in favour of the "war on drugs" than the US right; but the typical European left tends to be against it, with the typical European right being moderately in favour of it.
The biggest problem of course comes from the fact that "left" and "right" are pretty crappy descriptors of politics. Being in favour of higher taxes and a strong social welfare/benefit system really has almost nothing to do with your policies on gun control, which in turn usually has nothing to do with your policy on immigration. I can easily imagine multiple parties all with different platforms on each of these that would never fit in to the neat "left"/"right" divide that is so commonly thrown about.
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Being in favour of higher taxes and a strong social welfare/benefit system really has almost nothing to do with your policies on gun control, which in turn usually has nothing to do with your policy on immigration.
Maybe not with logical necessity, but pretty much everyone who supports collective solutions will be opposed to individual rights like self-defense or even citizenship. They also believe in group ideology, so while comrades might stray from the message, they'll instantly retract their opinion if consensus requires it. Not because they were wrong or right, but because they realized they were being disobedient.
higher taxes may seem to be the opposite of "liberty"; but it's viewed in context of using the money to promote the liberty of those who have less without impinging TOO greatly on those who have more, increasing the baseline liberty enjoyed by citizens overall
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
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I don't know why, the MAFIAA and artists are generally very left-wing.
Only from a US (and to a somewhat lesser extent, UK) point of view. Remember that "left" from a (mainland) European perspective is generally viewed as significantly further left of "left" from a US perspective. Some policies of the US left are seen as draconianly "right" by many Europeans.
I used to get a big kick out of Fox News calling the likes of Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama 'Socialists', over here they'd be decidedly right wing, but now the joke has gotten old. Some dubo even called Hilary a Marxist which stil makes me chuckle. The confusion stems form the fact that the USA has no political left outside of a few university campuses and let's not forget those eccentrics in Vermont who elected Bernie Sanders, a self described Social Democrat to the senate... that surprised me when I fou
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I'm sure I've seen it and done it before... but for anyone wondering, I come up as pretty far economic left, social libertarian (which is no surprise to me).
Scores:
Economic Left/Right: -6.12
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.72
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Economic Left/Right: 1.25
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -2.31
Which hilariously puts me closer to Francois Hollande than it does to even Barack Obama, although I am certainly to the right of Hollande. So, if Obama is a socialist, I must be a red flag waving communist.
The irony is that when I came back from the polls, I joked at work that I voted for Jill Stein (which I did not), but it turns out that according to this test she's closer to my views than the guy I did vote for. I made that joke to see the
Question is: would this have deterred Ortiz? (Score:2)
(mutatis mutandis of course).
Surprise, or maybe not so much... (Score:2)
I don't see this ruling going any further...
More information? (Score:2)
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That's interesting. Could you provide links to more information? I think that's the way it should be.
It's called fair use. We also have whistleblower laws. If you were genuinely interested you'd know this already.
Burn the Witches (Score:2)
Take a look at that statue of liberty. (Score:5, Informative)
There's something you owe the french.
Your freedom.
And most of your constitution.
Re:Take a look at that statue of liberty. (Score:5, Funny)
Can they ask the french for a refund or a replacement for faulty merchandise ?
Re:Take a look at that statue of liberty. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Take a look at that statue of liberty. (Score:5, Funny)
Have you tried restoring it to it's default settings?
Re:Take a look at that statue of liberty. (Score:5, Funny)
Have you tried repair permissions,?
FTFY. You're welcome.
Re:Take a look at that statue of liberty. (Score:4)
Have you tried restoring it to it's default settings?
I'm afraid such an operation will require a reboot: the default settings don't make sense anymore in the context of such an advanced state of internal corruption and aberrant operational mode.
Re:Take a look at that statue of liberty. (Score:4, Funny)
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"Hello, IT. Your Constitution isn't working? Have you tried turning it off and on again? Is it plugged in?"
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And some statue of a woman with a torch. Which, ironically became the symbol of hope/freedom for Europeans fleeing to the U.S.
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And which ironically is a plagiarism of another statue, and therefore copyright infringment?
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Well according to the French HADOPI law, you get to do that three times, then you get disconnected.
"Freedom" of the French. Yeah, right.
Re:Take a look at that statue of liberty. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Take a look at that statue of liberty. (Score:5, Informative)
No, that's something we owe Louis XVI. France was most assuredly not a democratic state at the time. As for the Constitution, Montesquieu was a large influence, no doubt, but again was not exactly a democrat or even a supporter of American independence. Freedom wears a crown, eh?
A) You're confounding democracy with freedom. It's the same mistake people make when they talk about capitalism, while thinking of free market. Or socialism/communism and totalitarianism/dictatorship.
B) Freedom may wear a crown. Remember that constitutional monarchy failed in France, yet England's monarchy was/is very much like a constitutional monarchy(it's limited by many laws, yet there is no formal "constitution"). The constitution of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was written by the king!
Re:Take a look at that statue of liberty. (Score:4, Interesting)
Given that at least some parts of Magna Carta are technically still enforce I don't think you can say England is very much like a constitutional monarchy, it *is* a constitutional monarchy.
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Re:Take a look at that statue of liberty. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Even the US still uses some Napoleonic Law (or more correctly something quite similar to it), in Louisiana.
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England's monarchy is pretty much the prototypical constitutional monarchy: the idea that a constitution ought to be a single written document was a later development after the concept of a constitutional monarchy was established. Of course, you are confounding constitutional limitations
Re:Take a look at that statue of liberty. (Score:4, Interesting)
Louis XVI had some progressive velleities, but lacked political acumen (though he wasn't as stupid as he is often portrayed - by today's standards, he was a huge nerd).
La Fayette initially came to the help of the newborn USA by his own decision and with his own means, when France was reluctant to confront the English. Later, he convinced Louis XVI to help. I won't go into details but a lot of occult funding was involved, with the implication of the famous playwright Beaumarchais at a point.
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Actually, the Declaration of the Right of Man and of the Citizen, the first French constitutional text, was drafted by La Fayette when he came back from the USA, and heavily borrowed from the constitution of Virginia IIRC.
We can talk about a lot of cross-pollinisation instead of making it one-way.
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Couldn't we just agree that when it comes to stuff like that we copied from each other?
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What about Normandy? Lots of American soldiers buried there.
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Forget it. The US Democratic Party is not at all liberal on copyright. They're practically joined at the hip with Hollywood, who we all know believes that copyright should be ridiculously strong. Republicans are no better on this issue, dismissing staffers who question copyright and sponsoring extreme legislation such as SOPA. The media feels too much self interest and most of the time fails to report fairly on the issue. Even PBS can't bring themselves hold an honest debate on copyright.
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Hate to tell you this, but only a minority of Europeans actually live in France, there are a few other countries in the EU...
Thanks for your attention, I hope you enjoyed your geography lesson.
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Hate to tell you but the European Court of Human Rights is not an EU court but a COE (council of europe) court.
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Re:Land of the free (Score:4, Interesting)
Mankind sort-of made a pact with horses. They let you ride on their back and agree to be used for labor, but in return you promise not to kill them for food.
Similar deals have been made with for instance donkeys, dogs, cats and falcons. They hunt for us, guard us or carry our loads.
Cows appear much less intelligent and you won't be able to make such a deal. They are basically a meat-milk-excrement factory, barely intelligent enough
to stay awake. All they do all day is stand around and eat. Therefore we are allowed to eat them.
On a sidenote, this is the reason I don't eat pig. They are way too intelligent to be brought to the slaughterhouse.
Re:Land of the free (Score:4, Informative)
Huh? People eat all of the animals you listed (except perhaps falcons). Horse meat is taboo in the US, but commonly eaten in France and Italy. Donkey meat is not as common, but still consumed in Europe. Dogs and cats are eaten in Asia. Animals don't really care what you do with them when you die - you are anthropomorphizing.
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Falcons stay with their owner for protection, shelter and free food. The life the falconer gives them is better than the life they would get in the wild. It's why they choose to stay and not fly off to fend for themselves.
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I disagree. Horses are stupid as well, but their meat tastes much better than beef. It is just that cows waste less food.
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"Similar deals have been made with for instance donkeys, dogs, cats and falcons."
Eating your fellow carnivores is in general a bad idea, and that goes for zombies and cannibals. The concentration of poisons go up the higher the food chain you go. A falcon can suffer from eating rats not harmed by eating insecticide-laced insects.
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Actually, traditionally, most farm work was done by neutered male cattle (oxen), not by horses. Horses were too expensive. And oxen did get slaughtered and eaten when they were no longer able to work.
The taboo about eating horses comes not from their being working animals - it comes from the fact that they were expensive, and therefore kept by the upper classes, who had plenty of other food, and thus, could afford to be sentimental. The fact that the upper classes mainly kept them also led to horses be
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I was hoping someone would pick up on this. I live in the UK, but I'm vegetarian, so I get to laugh and point at all my friends who delight in eating mystery meat. Personally, I don't see much difference between horse and cow; why eat one and not the other?
I don't see a problem with eating horse... To my mind, the problem seems to be that the suppliers obviously aren't capable of keeping track of what goes into the products, so it could have been *anything*... we just got lucky it was horse.
On the other hand, vegitarians need to be careful - uniquorn has been found in some veggy meals :)
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To my mind, freedom of expression shouldn't necessarily be free of consequences. e.g. If I was a serial killer, I could claim that my murders were actually performance art, but then the punishment should also form part of the artwork. A lot of artists suffer for their art, and serving a prison sentence could be considered part of the whole "murder" performance.
That said, I don't agree with how copyright is used/abused these days and I think it's an outdated idea. Hum
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You seem to ignore the fact that copyright protection is something that society GRANTED the copyright holders (by way of laws). So its just natural that society can limit copyright protection where necessary.