DC v. Heller (The handgun ruling)

Here the issue is whether an outright ban on individual possession/ownership of handguns in DC was constitutional. They ruled against it. I have to agree with them. I do believe in the right to regulate firearm ownership, but a wholesale ban obviously violates Constitutional Amendment Two on its face.

The main problem with firearms isn’t a problem with firearms, but a problem with poverty. They make things worse, but they aren’t going to go away. Efforts should be focused on limiting their availability in sensible ways that still allow ownership for self-preservation and recreational (hunting, marksmanship competitions, and rich-middle-age-white-guy ten-pace-and-turn dueling) purposes.

The real focus should be on eliminating poverty.

Rothgery v. Gillespie County

In this case the court rightly affirms that a person has the right to counsel upon first restriction of rights. It can’t work any other way and any court that thought otherwise doesn’t understand the founding principle of justice.

Greenlaw v. US

This case centered around a convicted party’s appeal that resulted in the appellate court increasing his sentence. That don’t make no goddamn sense. It was vacated.

The best analogy here is one of physics. If I push up against a wall, the worst that should happen is it should stay still, the best I budge it forth. If, however, someone else pushes the other side, I may lose ground. Makes sense in physics, makes sense in law.

The world may be a little less funny, but it’s still a fuckin’ joke, so we should all take a moment to laugh.

In rememberance of George Carlin, a moment of laughter:

ahahahahahahahahahahahaha… [looks around] hahaha!

From Associated Press

The Associated Press, following criticism from bloggers over an AP assertion of copyright, plans to meet this week with a bloggers’ group to help form guidelines under which AP news stories could be quoted online.

Basically the AP is claiming I (or anyone) can’t do what I just did. I just excerpted a copyrighted article of theirs for the purpose of referring to it (which I just did). This isn’t about their ownership of the copyright. Of course they own the copyright and they have every right to ask for reprint licenses from anyone who reprints their work.*

See that asterisk? It usually means there’s fine print coming. Fine print is a term of art referring to print in a contract that serves as a caveat or modifier on the overall content. It’s called fine print because it may appear in a smaller typeface to suggest less importance and may therefore be glossed over.

The asterisk here means that there are exceptions to the scope of copyright. One of these is alternative public licensing. This includes things like Creative Commons and GPL. But there are also fair use exceptions. Fair use comes into play as a result of the purpose of copyright.

Copyright is different from free speech in that it is not a fundamental, inalienable right. It is in fact a transferable right that is granted to the creator(s) of a work explicitly to promote science and art (at least in the United States of America). It is intended to have a limited temporal lifetime and only is meant to persist for a period of time to allow the author(s) to profit from their creations or discoveries, thus encouraging more work.

But hand in hand with copyright is this Fair Use Doctrine I’ve been mentioning. What is Fair Use? Fair use lays out exceptions to copyright whereby the work (or more usually a portion) may be copied without permission. It is founded on the same principles as copyright and intends to promote the same things that copyright stands to promote. There are limits to it, but they do not come by the word as the AP is trying to license their work.

For the purposes of addressing news in a blog post or other similar medium quoting a limited part of the copyrighted work is fair. If the AP doesn’t like the law, they have basically two options:

1. Lobby to have the law changed
2. Make their content accessible only by registration and as part of that registration require assent to provisions that restrict the reproduction of the work

The second choice is to say, “You can only access/view/read this work if you promise not to copy or otherwise reproduce, transmit, etc. etc. said work under penalties laid out below.” Of course, this would make their service useless.

The AP is aligning itself with the RIAA, MPAA, and BSA who all seem to be under some hopeless delusion about the future of creative content and copyright. Authors should be, will be, and are paid for their work. Organizations that were originally set up to aide authors in that endeavor are increasingly useless. The way forward is a system of micropayments for content. The sooner they implement such a system the more chance they have of sustaining their own existence beyond the next 5-10 years. The more they poke babies in the eyes with subpoenas, the less sympathy the public has for their position and the longer it will take for the content market to be as healthy and profitable as it should be.

I’m obviously interested in politics. Back in 2004 electoral-vote.com became a staple of any good political diet. In 2006, more coverage for the midterms. And now this past Primary season and on into the general election, it’s still rocking.

It wasn’t until this year that I found out the site is run by Andrew Tanenbaum. He wrote or co-wrote several of the texts for my classes over the past couple of years. It’s an inspiration to see what he’s done with that site. And just what has he done, you ask?

It’s data-heavy, but it’s still light enough to read. While he obviously has a liberal streak, he still does a good job of maintaining the truth. That, above all things, is the cardinal rule of gonzo journalism. You can have your opinion, but the moment you let your opinion influence your ability to tell a snark from a snipe, all is lost.

It’s in the interest of spreading that resource I’ve got the little banner over there. That and to help keep our eye on the prize, which is actually not to see Obama become the next president, and certainly not to see McCain become the next president. My goal for the 2008 United States Presidential Election is:

That both candidates electoral totals be prime numbers. At all costs.

17 521
29 509
47 491
59 479
71 467
89 449
107 431
137 401
149 389
179 359
191 347
227 311
257 281

-Adam

Felt like it was time for a new theme around here.

Might mess with the colors some more and might tear it all down and redo it tomorrow.

I got tired of looking at the old theme, sue me.