Thursday, July 3rd, 2008
A US Federal court has ruled that Google must hand over Youtube usage logs to Viacom. Those logs include the following information.
Viacom is the parent company of Paramount pictures and MTV. They accuse YouTube of “massive copyright infringement”. A few other international companies are looking to join in on the lawsuit as part of a possible class-action against Google. One such company is The UK’s Premier League association which contends that Youtube has allowed the viewing of football (soccer) match highlights.
Clearly the lawsuit isn’t something new as it has been in litigation for over a year now, but these developments are troubling to say the least. This order opens a wide path not to just go after Google as a company, but also individual users of the YouTube service. I wonder if a person views copyrighted material, knowing it is copyrighted have they violated the law as well as those who supply it?
What are your thoughts on this? Do you feel violated? Does it concern you that by embedding copyrighted material on a website or blog via YouTube that could possibly be considered an issue of copyright infringement?
Google has been ordered to turn over all the REMOVED videos as well. Google had argued that Viacom should have to specify the individual videos, but the judge disagreed
Google responded by saying:
“We are pleased the court put some limits on discovery,” Google said in the statement, “including refusing to allow Viacom to access users’ private videos and our search technology. We are disappointed the court granted Viacom’s overreaching demand for viewing history. We are asking Viacom to respect users’ privacy and allow us to anonymize the logs before producing them under the court’s order.”
Tuesday, July 1st, 2008
Are you ready to be pissed off? Good, because you came to the right place. Check this out…
A prisoner killed in a Maryland county jail on Sunday was a victim of “vigilante justice,” Prince George’s County Chief Executive Jack Johnson said.
Ronnie White, 19, was in custody in connection with the death of a police officer.
Ronnie White, 19, died of strangulation and asphyxiation and had two broken bones in his neck, an autopsy showed.
An attorney for White’s family said that because White was being held in solitary confinement at the Prince George’s County Correctional Center, a corrections officer would have had to let whoever killed the prisoner into his cell. Link to rest of the article
This is a man who hadn’t seen his day in court nor had a chance to address the charges against him and some assholes decided to take it upon themselves to execute a summary judgment on him. Hell, even the worst dictators in the world have a greater sense of right and wrong than this. But what can “we” do about it?
To start with we can demand justice. Someone must hang for this. It is as simple as that. Probably multiple people if the truth were known. I don’t mean legally hang I mean literally hang. Like they did to people in the old days. You know, wild west style. Except they’ll get a fair trial before they hang.
Friday, June 27th, 2008
The “honorable” James Fagan (D-Taunton Mass) reacting to a proposal regarding Jessica’s Law.
I’ll let the video speak for itself.
Somethings just make you shake your head. Somethings make you sigh. Things like this boil the blood. Anyone care to tell me why a “man” like this is a representative? I’m not lost on the fact that he’s telling how he or any other defense lawyer can and will examine a witness on the stand child or not. But this is just disgusting on so many levels
Thursday, June 26th, 2008
In the first EVER ruling regarding the 2nd amendment of the Constitution of the United States (CONUS) the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has come down on the side of liberty and declared Washington D.C.’s 32 year old ban on hand guns as UNCONSTITUTIONAL.
Write for the 5 to 4 majority justice Scalia said -
In interpreting this text (2nd Amendment of the United States Constitution), we are guided by the principle that “the Constitution was written to be understood by the voters; its words and phrases were used in their normal and ordinary as distinguished from technical meaning.” United States v. Sprague, 282 U. S. 716, 731 (1931); see also Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1, 188 (1824). Normal meaning may of course include an idiomatic meaning, but it excludes secret or technical meanings that would not have been known to ordinary citizens in the founding generation.
A ploy often used by the anti-freedom side of the issue is that the amendment actually means something more technical than what it states. For instance people will often state that the term people in the amendment actually refers to a collective people, or government. The above shows that the SCOTUS recognizes this not to be the case. In other words they have reached the same exact conclusion that the majority of Americans have. The text of the amendment is written in reference to individuals.
We must also address the District’s requirement (as applied to respondent’s handgun) that firearms in the home be rendered and kept inoperable at all times. This makes it impossible for citizens to use them for the core lawful purpose of self-defense and is hence unconstitutional.
The high court correctly stated that DC’s regulations regarding handguns was unconstitutional. Why? Because the purpose of a handgun is self defense. The purpose of the 2nd Amendment is self defense. The purpose of DC’s sweeping prohibition against the private ownership of handguns was at direct odds with both of those purposes. In fact the District’s position for the past 32 years has been that all guns (handguns, long rifles, etc) have to be completely disabled and totally inoperable at all times unless at a persons place of work.
It’s almost comical when you consider that this whole suit came about because a D. C. special policeman, applied to register a handgun he wished to keep at home, but the District refused. Talk about crapping on your own knees with this one. But then what else can you expect from the government? Had they simply issued the 1 year license to Mr. Heller this case would have never made it to the SCOTUS. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very pleased it did. I just find it a little humorous.
So now that the SCOTUS has reaffirmed that owning firearms is an individual right and NOT a privilege conferred on a few by the government where do we go from here? Well for one the margin of the ruling is something to be concerned about. It could have easily gone either way and it was simply luck that caused it to swing in the right direction. In other words we’re not out of the woods yet in regards to our 2nd Amendment rights. There needs to be an ongoing campaign to get the truth out to the American public. In recent polling (November 2007) the vast majority of respondents held that gun possession is an individual right.
Because people will say that one poll means nothing we can also take a look at an article by CNN in which the majority of those polled express their belief that the 2nd amendment is about individuals and not “the state”.
The problem lies in the fact that the vocal minority often over shouts everyone else which leads people to believe that the majority of people are against a personal right to own guns. Nothing could be further from the truth.
While this ruling is a long time in coming and no doubt a great victory now would be the WRONG time to sit back and rest on our laurels and watch the paint dry. Have no doubt that across the United States people and governments will challenge every word of this historic decision. They will try to find and manipulate every possible loophole. Licensing laws will get far stricter for one.
So my fellow Americans, celebrate. But don’t forget the work has only just begun!
Before I launch into my diatribe about the US election just wanted to let everyone know I am considering selling this blog. No, I don’t expect to get rich from it so the asking price if I do sell it will be normal for what it is. Somehow I’ve managed to get myself a Page Rank of 5 and a pretty loyal following. I’m still mulling over the idea of selling it to someone who has more time and passion to either continue as it is (except bigger and better) or just start from scratch. If anyone is interested let me know and we can discuss it. As I said I’m not 100% certain of everything yet, but thought I’d lay it out on the table for readers before I advertise it to the world. That will come in the next few days.
As for the election. Someone please, please, please tell me where one party ends and the other begins? Why do we even call them republican and democrats? Why not just call them “thieves, liars, murderers, adulterers, and shameless pigs”? It would be a great deal more accurate than trying to define them by their ideological separations. Problem is there are none between the three front runners.
More than that are we really deciding between a republican and a democrat or are we deciding between Clinton and Obama? Speaking of Obama someone please tell me where he stands on an issue. Any issue. Because I’ve been listening and reading what he has to say and aside from speaking well he’s got no position on anything.
How about “Hill”? Is she a vicious woman or what? “Hell hath no wrath…” Yeah it’s heresy but it is almost fitting to Clinton. I wonder if she gets it from Bill? It seems “Americas first black president” isn’t in such good graces with the black vote. Which leads me to ask what exactly is “the black vote”? What happened to the American vote? Now we have black, spanish, and gay votes but the rest of us are just “the voters”. As if those groups somehow deserve recognition above and beyond the rest of us common voters.
How about McCain? Please don’t tell me that boob is going to get into the Whitehouse. I’m almost certain he won’t, but then I ask myself why is he even still in the race. Are “we the people” really that stupid that we can’t see him for what he really is? Everyone gave Kerry hell for flip-flopping on his opinions during his campaign, but McCain has made a career out of flip-flopping in the Congress. But now we’re giving him serious consideration for the Presidency? Are you serious?
Huckabee I’ve not seen anything bad about, but I wouldn’t put it past him. I pay more attention to him over the coming days assuming he doesn’t drop out. I didn’t pay him much mind before because I just assumed he wouldn’t be around. Kind of like Ron Paul who hasn’t dropped out but he’s stopped campaigning to focus on his congressional race. Sad thing that, Ron Paul could have been a breath of fresh air. A break from the party lines, but oh well.
So who will I vote for? I’ll ask God for his wisdom when the time comes. None of them impress me
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