Parts of SOPA Hiding Inside a Boring Case About Invisible Braces 174
derekmead writes: The most controversial parts of SOPA, an anti-piracy bill defeated in 2012 after a massive public outcry, may end up becoming de facto law after all, depending on the outcome in an obscure case that is working its way through the legal system without anyone noticing.
Next week, the U.S. Appeals Court for the Federal Circuit will hear oral arguments in ClearCorrect Operating, LLC v. International Trade Commission, a case that could give an obscure federal agency the power to force ISPs to block websites. In January, The Verge reported that this very legal strategy is already being considered by the Motion Picture Association of America, as evidenced by a leaked document from the WikiLeaks Sony dump.
Next week, the U.S. Appeals Court for the Federal Circuit will hear oral arguments in ClearCorrect Operating, LLC v. International Trade Commission, a case that could give an obscure federal agency the power to force ISPs to block websites. In January, The Verge reported that this very legal strategy is already being considered by the Motion Picture Association of America, as evidenced by a leaked document from the WikiLeaks Sony dump.
Copyright steals creative works. (Score:5, Insightful)
Copyright has no clothes is how the saying goes.
Perpetual copyright - and make no mistake it is that by extension after extension - robs our culture of rich works that never were. If copyright was a sane term like 20 years then after those 20 years new authors could tell new stories in those universes and receive their own 20 year copyright on their flavors. But, no, better to let the tapestry rot away for a few pennies more a year.
Get a free book on the issues here: The Public Domain [thepublicdomain.org].
What did you expect? (Score:1)
Big Money *always* wins. Always. There's nothing that can be done.
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You could kill those that commit those acts and their family. Then those that replace them. Repeat until a learning effect sets in.
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Assassination politics.
http://cryptome.org/ap.htm [cryptome.org]
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I'm mildly curious to watch the ramifications of extremely permissive firearms law combined with a history of giving those most inclined to own them what some cultural trappings would cla
Re:What did you expect? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Nothing useful will happen, they'll just go postal on their local boss and fellow co-workers (co-victims) and never address the true source of their pain.
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It worked for the french.
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It turned out well in the end, but they did go through a period of much violence and killing after their revolution. There was a lot of public fear that those who opposed the revolution were underground, plotting their counter-revolution, building a secret army. In response to this the new leaders started systematically executing anyone judged to show even slight sympathy towards the old aristocracy.
Revolutions are bloody affairs, even when they work.
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Well, someone has to be in charge.
The problem is that they forget that desperate people tend to act violent and start killing rich people. You can't have wealth distribution get too out of whack or you end up with the French Revolution.
You can add an observation along these very lines to your Jefferson Quote Collection.
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Yep, they forgot to set a date on the calendar to kill the rich all over again once they got snooty.
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I did neither say that it should be done nor that I would do it. I only wanted to point out that there IS actually something that can be done.
I am simply fed up with people claiming there is "no alternative". There always is. It may not be pleasant and it may not be what you want, but there is ALWAYS at the very least one alternative.
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Like, say, an online board where people may hide behind the pseudo-anonymity of an online handle?
Just askin'. ;)
Re:What did you expect? (Score:5, Interesting)
Take a look at it from a different angle. Gay people didn't stop pushing for marriage rights just because they had been denied in the past or ballot measures were unsuccessful. Why should you finding it surprising that the people who want SOPA or similar laws would quit just because it didn't work the first time?
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Haters gonna hate (Score:2)
Fine, fuck 'em ... (Score:2)
I hereby invoke the "he needed killkin' " laws Texas is alleged to have, and suggest it is both moral and correct in the defense of our rights to shoot every asshole associated with the copyright cartel.
You're welcome.
Now get on with it.
(No, I'm not actually advocating murder)
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I fail to see why you feel like mentioning murder. Murder is the killing of human beings. What's that got to do with it?
Re:Fine, fuck 'em ... (Score:5, Funny)
"Why won't sharks attack lawyers? Professional courtesy."
"How do you stop a lawyer from drowning? Take your foot off his neck."
"What do you have when you have a lawyer buried up to his neck in sand? Not enough sand."
"The problem with lawyers is that the actions of 99% of them give the other 1% a bad name."
Thanks, you've been a wonderful audience. Tip your waiters, they work hard.
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I fail to see why you feel like mentioning murder. Murder is the killing of human beings. What's that got to do with it?
That whooshing sound is the metaphor that whizzed right past your comprehension. Questionable in taste it may have been, but literal it clearly was not.
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No, that is HOMICIDE. Murder is illegal, homicide is a general term. Justifiable homicide is a legal concept with a lot of cases behind it.
What we're looking for here isn't homicide, it's intimidation. Keep them shaking in their boots and make them consider the risks before doing shady stuff. This is happening to the families of US military men right now. [cbslocal.com] If this was a gay family who was being intimidated by some local rednecks it would be headline news across America and protests would be held in ma
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Don't split hairs. Murder, homicide, whatever, either only applies to human beings.
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If it only was so. That's why lawyers exist, so people may even pester you after you got rid of them.
Re:Fine, fuck 'em ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now if someone was to film this hypothetical murder.. which would be longer, the time in prison or the length of the copyright?
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Trick question ... before the copyright expires the copyright cartel will have bought another extension.
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Better question:
If the film was released as a movie, who would serve a longer prison sentence, the killer or the guy who leaked it on TPB?
Umbrella SCOTUS ruling required (Score:1)
"Laws and ammendments introduced by stealth are invalid."
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:shit sandwiching (Score:5, Funny)
this, the TPP, pipa, DMCA, you name it and it all shows up buried in some obscure bill about dentures or highway reflector color. In america we could pass legislation on the width of an ear of corn and by the end of the vote it would have legalized nazi bingo parlour strippers and privatized nuclear cheesecake warfare.
I'm confused. Are they bingo parlor strippers who are members of the Nazi party, or are they just strippers who work in a bingo parlor frequented by Nazis? Because to me this distinction is very important when deciding whether or not they should be legal. And if we privatized nuclear cheesecake warfare, how would we keep a Cheesecake Factory franchise from opening in Tehran?
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I'm confused. Are they bingo parlor strippers who are members of the Nazi party, or are they just strippers who work in a bingo parlor frequented by Nazis? Because to me this distinction is very important when deciding whether or not they should be legal.
Come on dude, never look a gift whore in the mouth.
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Come on dude, never look a gift whore in the mouth.
Shouldn't that be gift whores?
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I'm not putting my DNA dispenser anyplace I haven't inspected closely.
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as long as those inspections include reach around's for everyone... i for one welcome them.
Re: shit sandwiching (Score:1)
How else do you know she swallowed?
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...legalized nazi bingo parlour strippers...
Sorry, I fail to see a problem here, could you elaborate please?
Re:shit sandwiching (Score:4, Interesting)
We keep running around fighting fires instead of fighting arsonists
.
The people who want to maintain the exploitation market (you didn't think it was actual artists getting paid did you?) will just try again and again and win a victory of a thousand cuts eventually. We need to put them in cages at the very least. This is a losing battle the way it's being fought.
We should pick one of the very sleazy operators like Sony and keep going after them through a multitude of approaches and just keep coming until they no longer exist.
Make their name a synonym for when the population turns on a corporation and irrevocably crushes it into the dirt.
Make every corporation on earth fear getting Sony'd.
The way you've been conditioned to think about conflict are the values of the exploited and defeated population. Greenfield your preconceptions. Fight the dirty fight and win or they will.
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they just want more of everyone's money... as long as enough keep paying them this will continue. It really is simple... close your wallet. that's it no other revolution needed.
It almost feels hopeless (Score:3)
This kind of potentially critical situation (the gov't being able to filter the internet at the behest of corporate interests) shouldn't require us all rising up and complaining. We elect people that should have our fiduciary interests at heart, and dome of our Congressmen do still care (the "boy scouts"). I know my rep personally and have spoken with him at length about various issues, and he does his best. Too many of them, however, are powerless at the feet of their own political parties and the money that elected them.
I find myself hoping and praying that somehow, some way, the right decision(s) will get made - but I find myself expecting being more and more cynical about the whole thing. The fundamentals of the system are broken to the point that the Supreme Court is the only truly effective governing body... To channel Jack Nicolson's Joker, "This government needs an enema."
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You have fallen into a trap of egocentrism. Implicit in your statements is the expectation that what your desires, (specifically you), deserve to be heard above those of everyone else. The same goes for your sense of what is right.
There are a lot of people being governed, and they have very diverse views about how things should work. You are just one tiny drop in an ocean.
Furthermore, some voices *are* louder than others. The richer you are, the more clout you have. People think this is so terrible, bu
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An evil rich person can govern more effectively (for everyone) than a virtuous but incompetent person any day.
I'll see you one George Bush and raise you ....
A Donald Trump.
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I think Bush is smarter than people give him credit for - he just deliberately acted dumb a lot of the time, because it fit his political image. He ran as an everyman, a typical American - not some elitist science-type who thinks he knows better than the common voter. He never made a big deal of his academic record, he holidayed at the most American of places, and he deliberately styled himself as a Texas cowboy and spoke in common vernacular and accent whenever possible. It was all a carefully crafted imag
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Does it matter? Since he turned a budget surplus into huge deficits, started two expensive wars he couldn't end, and helped cause the worst economic recession since WW2, I don't think he qualifies as "governing more effectively (for everyone)".
Personally I'd go with "weak willed and easily led" rather than "stupid". But it's hard to be sure. "Not competent" seems well supported by facts though.
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He certainly screwed up. It just wasn't because of a general lack of intelligence. More of a personality flaw: He desired to be a great president, one who would be remembered for his leadership and success. It's hard to be a great president during a time of peace, and he saw a good war as his ticket into the history books - a military victory would surely secure his place of honor. When the 9/11 attack gave him a good excuse, he jumped at the chance.
Re: It almost feels hopeless (Score:2)
That may explain Afghanistan but not Iraq. "Wanting greatness" doesn't explain or excuse lying to your citizens to start a war, spying on them on (at the time) flimsy-to-nonexistent legal reasons (and similar useful results), or the economic carnage wrought by war and trickle-down economics. Sorry, competent presidents may trip into one of those but not all of them.
Re:It almost feels hopeless (Score:5, Insightful)
When you have a past president [newsmax.com] saying:
You should know you're fucked.
The only fiduciary interest these guys have is their own, and your politics are irrevocably for sale.
Your interests don't fucking matter, unless you have enough money to make a large campaign donation and pay for lobbyists.
When money == speech, if you don't have money you don't have speech, and your government doesn't give a crap about you.
America has been an oligarchy for a long time, and it's only getting worse. Why do you think they let the MPAA write laws like SOPA in the first place?
Because that's who paid for them.
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We elect people that should have our fiduciary interests at heart, and dome of our Congressmen do still care (the "boy scouts"). I know my rep personally and have spoken with him at length about various issues, and he does his best. Most of them, however, are powerless at the feet of their own political parties and the money that elected them.
TFTFY.
A U.S. Senator must now spend most of his time (by far) raising funds for is next campaign. The problem is less intense, but by no means insignificant for members of the House. Current law has seen to it that money can buy just about anything in our government. The odds of that changing any time soon are, alas, extremely long.
First forcing European countries, NZ/AU, etc. (Score:3)
Wait, if the case ... (Score:1)
... "is working its way through the legal system without anyone noticing", how did You hear about it?
Apparently they haven't been ground down... (Score:3, Interesting)
... hard enough yet.
So far the MPAA has been losing everywhere for years. I don't see this going anywhere.
Lets say they get ISPs to do one thing or another. So what? Worst case you run your dirty traffic through a VPN.
This gets nutty enough and large portions of the web will go from the conventional internet to the dark web.
They need to offer their content on the streaming services and they need to do it at a competitive rate.
If they can't make money like that then cut production costs. That's all they can do.
Stopping the piracy isn't going to happen because the communications network is inherently uncontrolled and uncontrollable. The Iranians and the Chinese can't control their network... why would the stupid studios think they could control the US network? Ignorance.
You can control the system if you control everything. Run the internet like the north koreans and you can lock it down.
But that won't happen so the whole thing is pointless.
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'Dark Web'.. Please save the teenage stuff for the superhero comic books. Your ISP will keep the internet "safe" from the encrypting hoards.
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I can't tell if you're kidding... TOR is an example of the dark web... anyone that knows anything knows that.
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Tor is an example of a highly funded CIA project that can be used to find your real identity [pando.com]
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""The Dark Web often confusingly referred to as the Deep Web[2] is the public[3] World Wide Web content that exists on darknets, networks which overlay the public Internet and require specific software, configurations or authorization to access and are often used for illegal or criminal activity. It forms part of the Deep Web, the part of the Web not indexed by search engines.[4][5][6][7] The darknets which constitute the Dark Web include small, friend-to-friend peer-to-peer networks, as well as large, popu
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Definition is impossible - as the term is a media creation, not technical, it is used with wild inconsistency.
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that applies to everything. All language is apparently pointless.
*makes animal noises.... flings poop*
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Tor? Tell me you're not serious! Big old 'end nodes' sticking up like pustules, just waiting to get popped.
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There are other implementations of the technology that don't have that weakness.
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MPAA and RIAA both represent distributors, labels, and studios not the actual artist, they are in the business of making money. Studios and labels give artists large advances to cover services they offer then charge outrageous amounts many times their cost for those services like studio time, radio campaigns, distribution, other advertising, etc... and recoup the advance and interest out of meager royalties the artist is paid while collecting a larger portion of the profit from the sales for themselves.
Indi
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That's not true. I think they can make a system that is as good as the free system.
I think a lot of them are going to need to move to something that looks like a cyberlocker site. Aka the content is there with ad content and they make money on the ads.
But even requiring a login and a subscription service is okay so long as the fees are reasonable. I mean they either need to bill out the cost of one show to something VERY VERY low or they need to have a comprehensive subscription service that includes all co
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Meh... Amazon or Hulu will take care of most of your needs... then fill the gap with piracy if people are being stupid.
I make it up to content producers that I really respect. But quite a few of them aren't worth it.
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Even if they win, they lose. The only reason Hollywood makes money hand over fist is because they have mindshare - their celebrities and artists are known throughout the world, so everyday people want to watch their movies or hear their songs.
The Internet drops the cost of the distribution business to near zero. If Hollywood tries to keep a stranglehold on their existing distribution channels, that just creates an op
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Exactly. The gatekeeper model in media is dead.
Braces? (Score:5, Informative)
Parts of SOPA Hiding Inside a Boring Case About Invisible Braces
You could have at least explained the bit in the headline about braces (the teeth kind) in the summary:
At first glance, ClearCorrect v. ITC looks pretty banal. It’s a case about a 3D printing model file for invisible braces. ClearCorrect, an Invisalign competitor, had a subsidiary in Pakistan create 3D models of braces, which it then sent from Pakistan to the US over the internet. ClearCorrect then 3D-printed the braces in its Texas offices, a move that might infringe Invisalign patents. (The validity of the patents is being disputed in both court and at the US Patent & Trademark Office.)
Is this the right case? (Score:3)
I've heard of another case were the MPAA was getting an order against "all third parties" to block a website they didn't like. This looks a lot more limited: Align Technologies says ClearCorrect is performing a patented process in Pakistan to evade Align's US Patent, and the ITC is ordering ClearCorrect (not third parties) to stop receiving the models which are supposedly the results of this process. Whether this is or is not within the ITCs jurisdiction, it doesn't look like wide-ranging SOPA-like powers.
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yes. it was written by the two major 'content' industry associations, and the legislators were paid to pass it.
And both democrats and republicans were paid to have it passed.
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The DMCA was a badly flawed law, passed for some pretty good reasons by technologically challenged legislators.
Where "pretty good reasons" = "briefcases full of cash"
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The Civil Rights act was passed with votes from both parties, but it was also championed by a Democratic President. They took ownership of it - and, rather than fight them over that, the trend in the Republican party was instead to court the southern/white/conservative vote that was alienated by that ownership. You can see it in so many th
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The Civil Rights act was passed with votes from both parties, but it was also championed by a Democratic President. They took ownership of it - and, rather than fight them over that, the trend in the Republican party was instead to court the southern/white/conservative vote that was alienated by that ownership. You can see it in so many things, starting with Nixon's Southern Strategy.
Sounds like the strategy of the Democrats after the Confederacy lost the civil war. Does the myth that the two main American parties are better defined by being against each other than by their ideological affiliations have some ground in the reality?
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That is that many less children collecting welfare, and in the foster system. Forget skin color or demographics,
Why do you think I should pay for someone else bad decisions for life?
Why do republicans oppose welfare and then want the poor to keep making bad decisions and not give them options to get out? Planned parenthood, free condoms and birth control for the poor do more to help the poor than any charity ever could and any foster home could provide to kids.
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because along with the fiscal right, small government people, the big tent also includes the religious right... who frown on that.
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...who also then want to punish the mothers and children in question rather than treating these impoverished people in the manner that Jesus would.
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i think the religious right and and the fiscal right actually intersect on this issue.
they both believe that charity is not the purview of government.
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I've seen a few prominent figures on the religious right argue that welfare is an attack on the position of churches, because it undermines their god-appointed duty of caring for the poor. If government is keeping people from poverty, then how are christians supposed to fill their obligation to minister to them?
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well you can understand the impulse, if government is taking my money to force me to provide for those less fortunate, i can't do it voluntarily even if i want to... because, you know, no money.
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Provide citations on how the rich are subsidizing the country please. I don't think this has ever been done before, not sure why. Please also define what "the rich" are. Thanks in advance.
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Fact: all politicians hate poor people.
Fact: They LOVE people that give them money. If you give them LOTS of money, they will do what you ask.
This is how the United states has worked since the very first day. The founding fathers were not fighting for the poor common folks.
Re:Democrats (Score:5, Insightful)
That's dopey. You've got to get information from places other than pro-life websites.
But even if you use the numbers cited by the pro-life websites (and cited NO WHERE ELSE), you'll see that live births outnumber abortions by at least 6-1. If you use census data for births, you'll see that it's more like 10-1. And that's if you accept the total number of black abortions the pro-life websites have pulled right outta their ass.
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I hope too many people don't actually agree with that...
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The total number of abortions (including in the black community) has been dropping every year since 1980. EVERY. SINGLE. YEAR.
https://www.guttmacher.org/med... [guttmacher.org]
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Unfortunately, the number of single mothers has been going up every year, so we have a different problem.
People under 30 are still not using contraception... they are just addressing the inevitable results differently.
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That's misleading. The number of abortions compared to pregnancies have been increasing yearly.
Additionally, there are now home treatments that are not calculated (besides the coat hanger before you go there) that do not count towards these figures.
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Please provide a citation that isn't from one of the anti-abortion websites (who for some reason, never seem to include any citations for the numbers they give, you will notice).
It just isn't so.
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Summary of Vital Statistics 2012 The City of New York, Pregnancy Outcomes, New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Office of Vital Statistics
Table 1: the total number of live births, spontaneous terminations (miscarriages), and induced terminations (abortions) for women in different age brackets between 15 and 49 years of age. The table also breaks that data down by race â" Hispanic, Asian and Pacific Islander, Non-Hispanic White, Non-Hispanic Black â" and also by borough of residen
Re: Democrats (Score:2, Troll)
And despite that, black women are aborting their babies almost 3 times as often as white women.
This has resulted in the black population growing at a very slow rate, costing blacks political power, influence, and economic success.
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Um, you know black birth rates are still higher than white birth rates, right?
http://www.childtrends.org/?in... [childtrends.org]
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/n... [cdc.gov]
Re: Democrats (Score:2)
And that means what? That white birth rates are even lower?
Didn't raise black birth rates one bit, did it?
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No, but you did say that black women aborting their pregnancies has resulted in very slow black population growth when in fact it is higher than the majority growth. Words like "very slow" have to have a reference and are not absolutes. In population analysis of humans in north America the reference is Caucasian in all but a few local areas.
Re: Democrats (Score:2)
It does seem that black population growth is growing faster than white, but the. Census Bureau is publishing data that indicates Hispanic birth rates are higher than other non-white races.
But if black women cut their abortion rate, this would be impacted. Noticeably from the looks of the data.
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You should not assume that black people believe the only way to gain political power is through the sheer force of population n
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Getting an abortion isn't life changing... having an unwanted child is...
Having an abortion is often a good decision.