Brain Enema of a Savage Mind

AT&T, Giving me More Reasons to Stick with Verizon

Ever since the iPhone came out I’ve wanted one.  I’m not much of a phone user, but the idea of being able to have anywhere access to the web in the shiny iPhone interface made me drool.  Of course I couldn’t justify the cost of the data plans, not to mention I was still under contract with Verizon.  We got another 2 year contract with Verizon as both of our phones were spiraling towards the grave (man, the RAZR’s looked so cool, but they were riddled with problems), so I put any thought of getting an iPhone on the back burner.  AT&T helped me not feel bad about this decision by doing such things as not allowing tethering of the phone (this is the ability to link the phone to your computer so that your computer can then use the phones internet connection to connect with the outside world).  Other news stories came up about little things where AT&T may have been influencing Apple to hobble features AT&T wasn’t keen on (features that mobile carriers in other countries do in fact offer on the iPhone).

As my Verizon contract inches towards running out I again looked at the iPhones with lust, but AT&T seemed intent on making me laugh at purchasing any phone that was locked in to their service.  AT&T has changed their terms of use to forbid the forming of class action lawsuits against them.  This from the terms of service that already force people in to arbitration that is decidedly leaning towards the corporate behemoth.  While this clause is of questionable legality – the ability to enforce does vary from state to state.  Even if held unenforceable it would cause people who have a grudge against AT&T to have very deep pockets to be able to wage a legal battle against them.

The US cellphone technology and system is already a joke when compared to much of the rest of the world.  Allowing these companies to employ questionable legal tactics is only going to further the divide between us and everyone else from a technological stand point.  This country is far too interested in civil legal action, corporate red tape, and shafting customers to actually think about becoming a nation of innovation once again.  It’s no wonder we’re in the economic mess we’re in.  While I’m not exactly the biggest fan of Verizon, these days they certainly are slipping in to being the lesser evil.

United States of the Recording Industry.

To say I’ve been dissapointed with certain aspects of our new President would be quite the understatement.  No, I don’t think he’s about to bring the American way of life to its knees or send us all to some form of doom and darkness as a lot of Republican pundits seem to believe, but I do find some of his early choices eerily striking to other politicians who have made a career out of limiting freedoms.  It started with him appointing several RIAA key lawyers to top spots in the Department of Justice.  This is a group of lawyers who seem to think that the law doesn’t apply to their own clients.  Their crusade against the evil people of America who are setting out to bring an end to the noble and ethical recording industry (please not the substance dripping from your monitor is indeed sarcasm) has gone far beyond a misuse of justice.  Sure, I believe they have every right to make a profit and to defend their copyright.  Downloading copyrighted material without the right of the copyright holder is against the law and I have no beef with that. I do have a beef against the tactics used in targeting lower and middle income families who can’t mount a proper defense on their own behalf.  I have a problem with their unethical use of private investigation companies who have been found guilty of breaking laws throughout various states, yet arguing that whether the evidence was gained legally or not doesn’t matter.

Obama’s most recent Supreme court justice nominee seems to be falling right along with all his other legal picks.  Perhaps the thing I find the most appalling in these trials is the ludicrous damages awarded to the recording industry.  While, if found guilty, I do believe that damages should be awarded, I am alarmed by the amount of said damages.  Rulings that awards tens of thousand of dollars per song downloaded in damages, in my mind, fits the definition of a cruel and unusual punishment.  In fact the Obama administration supports the $150,000 dollar per song maximum under Copyright Law.  Charging the guilty the full retail price for each album they downloaded seems a much more reasonable course of action – or if the goal is to really punish perhaps double the albums retail value even if the entire album, only a couple of song, were downloaded from it.  There is no validity that anyone has been able to show that suggests one person downloading an album illegally causes the recording industry to lose tens of thousands of dollars.  In truth, if the people didn’t download them, a large percentage of them probably wouldn’t have purchased the album anyways.  The math, the arguments, the logic, it’s all wrong.  What does any of this have to do with Obama picking Sonia Sotomayor to become a Supreme Court Justice?  She has ruled in favor of excessive damages in Copyright infringement cases throughout her career.  With a challenge to these damages potentially appearing before the Supreme Court in the near future her appointment would only further Governments support of big business and its continuing trend of putting the people that elected them in second-class role.

I never expect politicians to speak much truth, especially during an election, but Obama seems bent on going out of his way to contradict his idea of being a man of change.  Things seem pretty status quo to me.

Don’t You Dare Protect Your Land.

Having a problem with people trespassing on your land, vandalizing it, stealing things, and just generally causing a nuisance?  Well whatever you do, don’t you dare actually try to detain them so that you can contact the proper authorities.  Especially if those people are crossing the US/Mexican border illegally on to your land; they might sue you for millions of dollars.  I want to make it clear that this is about the stupid law involved in this incident.  I’m not trying to turn this in to a political debate over the hot topic of illegal immigration.  My argument is simply that this is another example of how broken the civil law system truly is.

I’m not sure who to be more offended at: some legal action group who feels it is necessary to make political points by bringing civil action on behalf of people they don’t care about beyond their ability to use them for their own political gain.  Or perhaps my loathing should be reserved for the judge who allowed these proceedings to continue, wasting more of the courts time and money on frivolous trials.  Yes, this trial is frivolous.  Ignore the obscene monetary value that they are seeking and look first at the fact that these people were trespassing on his land, all he did was detain them long enough for the authorities to respond.  Sure, he threatened them, but if a bunch of people are illegally on your land in the middle of the night your first instinct most likely isn’t going to be to make them tea and cupcakes.  You’re protecting the things you have worked hard for in life, and making threats isn’t exactly something that is a stretch of the imagination in that situation.  The fact is he didn’t shoot them.  He didn’t let the dog loose on them.  He did, however, make them believe that he was capable of these things, but what’s wrong with that?  What’s the point of a guard dog or a weapon if people don’t believe you actually are willing to use it.  He merely created in their minds the belief that he was capable of taking more severe action.  If the claim is true that he actually kicked one of the women, not in self-defense, then yes, I believe that one woman alone has a valid claim to press criminal or civil charges against the rancher (however not to the tune of millions of dollars).

Let’s talk about the millions of dollars.  How do you come to that kind of figure in the first place?  Are the lawyers bold enough to make some potential lost wages claims against the rancher?  Are they willing to say that by not allowing them to illegally enter the country he prevented their potential future livelihood?  They were entering the country illegally, they had no expectation of work, or any associated freedoms.  Yes some basic civil rights do apply.  Merely shooting them would constitute murder.  Locking them in some basement for weeks on end would be unlawful detainment.  However holding them in the field while calling for the authorities, to me, seems like a reasonable course of action.  When committing a crime, in this case illegally crossing the border, you have to know that there are potential consequences – your are, in fact, a criminal.  It’s another case of the criminals perceived rights being more important than the fact that they were committing a crime.  To expect, now that you’ve been caught, to be rewarded by millions of dollars is, at best, insane.  

One can hope that the men and the woman of the jury are as offended by the lawsuit as I am.  That they can see it is without merit (though there is a potential argument on behalf of the woman who was kicked), that the illegal immigrants are without legal standing in this matter.  However with the politically correct and bleeding heart nature that has become more prevalent in our culture one cannot be assured that some people on that jury won’t lend credibility to the plaintiffs and actually believe that they were somehow wronged.  Should it come to that I can only hope that they settle on a more reasonable figure, perhaps on the price of bus tickets back to their town of choice in Mexico.

Senator Biden, at it again!

Senator Joseph Biden has once again proven how inept he is when it comes to modern technology. His newest bright idea involves monitoring all peer-to-peer traffic on the internet to aid in the capture of child molesters and pornographers. He’s under some assumption that from the file name alone one can gauge the exact content of the file. Seriously. He does:

Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) said he was under the impression it’s “pretty easy to pick out the person engaged in either transmitting or downloading violent scenes of rape, molestation” simply by looking at file names.

What would be obvious to even the slowest minded of criminals would be to change the file name to something innocuous. There’s also the fact that a growing portion of peer-to-peer traffic these days is encrypted, which would further foil his brilliant detection methodologies.

Let’s ignore the fact that a filename alone can be absolutely misleading. There’s still the misguided belief by lawmakers that you can tie IP addresses to a specific individual. Ask the RIAA how well that one has been going for them. The problem is the people making these laws refer to experts who have next to no credentials in the field. It’s as if saying “he made the blinking 12:00 on the VCR go away, he must be an expert in media technologies!” Sadly our lawmakers spend too many times at luncheons on the dime of lobbyists rather than actually attempting to grasp a basic understanding of the technologies they seek to regulate.

I think going after these people who trade in kiddie porn is a great idea. I think working to develop some way to trace back these files, and monitor their trade so that the people responsible for them can be apprehended is an absolutely noble idea. I just wish people would have a clue before they charge headlong in to the fray thinking that they have the miracle device that will save the world. Right now a system such as this that is bound to cause a fair portion of false positives will go a long way towards destroying the reputations of innocent people. Once the label child molester is put upon someone, even if they are later found to be innocent, it never goes away. Our system might not be perfect, but we don’t need to further degrade it by embracing technologies that are such an obvious failure.

Happy 75th Anniversary!

Today marks 75 years since beer was once again made legal in this country.  After a few dark years of underground boozing and the rise to power of the mafia, the government wised up, at least momentarally, to repeal Prohibition and once again allow booze to flow freely!

So lift up a pint and celebrate 75 years of legalized beer!  Here’s to you beer, and 75 more years of deliciousness!