Law in action – Page 2 – Wis[s]e Words

Zeitgeist

Published on July 8, 2010

Drive your rightwing friends even more batty: Nixon was worried about climate change:

Adviser Daniel Patrick Moynihan, notable as a Democrat in the administration, urged the administration to initiate a worldwide system of monitoring carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, decades before the issue of global warming came to the public’s attention.

And again: Reagan was kind of a wuss compared to the wingnut fantasy version of him:

In fact, Reagan was terrified of war. He took office eager to vanquish Nicaragua’s Sandinista government and its rebel allies in El Salvador, both of which were backed by Cuba and the Soviet Union. But at an early meeting, when Secretary of State Alexander Haig suggested that achieving this goal might require bombing Cuba, the suggestion “scared the shit out of Ronald Reagan,” according to White House aide Michael Deaver. Haig was marginalized, then resigned, and Reagan never seriously considered sending U.S. troops south of the border, despite demands from conservative intellectuals like Norman Podhoretz and William F. Buckley. “Those sons of bitches won’t be happy until we have 25,000 troops in Managua,” Reagan told chief of staff Kenneth Duberstein near the end of his presidency, “and I’m not going to do it.”

Continuing our theme, the epic tale of when Terry Savage met a free lemonade stand shows that when it comes to political correctness even the most uptight liberal leftwinger has nothing on the wingnut right:

“No!” I exclaimed from the back seat. “That’s not the spirit of giving. You can only really give when you give something you own. They’re giving away their parents’ things — the lemonade, cups, candy. It’s not theirs to give.”

I pushed the button to roll down the window and stuck my head out to set them straight.

“You must charge something for the lemonade,” I explained. “That’s the whole point of a lemonade stand. You figure out your costs — how much the lemonade costs, and the cups — and then you charge a little more than what it costs you, so you can make money. Then you can buy more stuff, and make more lemonade, and sell it and make more money.”

Imagine having to live this way, of having to determine of anything you do whether or not it’s properly capitalist or backsliding deviantism and worse, having to do this not just for yourself, but for anybody you meet?

Some quick links to end the day:

Hard cases make bad law even in football

Published on July 5, 20101 Comment

Suarez proves he's a worldclass keeper

Suarez’s Hand of God lite has once again put the refereing and rules of football in the spotlight. This time the referee made the correct decision to send off Suarez for his handball but was it Asamoah Gyan who twatted the penalty, which meant Ghana didn’t win the regular game but lost in penalties. Our sense of fair play is outraged by this, that somebody can blatantly cheat and get punished for it yet still get his team in the semi-finals. Together with several other high profile incidents like England’s disallowed equaliser against Germany which sent them out of the Worldcup there’s been somewhat of a clamour for changes in the rules, you may have noticed.

First there was the call on FIFA to finally introduce proper goal line technology and television replays, after that disallowed England goal and an Argentine goal against Mexico that was blatantly offside but not spotted by the refs, both on the same day. In both cases the goals were turning points in the game and if not for the decision they could’ve taken a different turn. Had there been goalline detectors to show the ball had crossed the line in the first case, or had video replays been officially available to the refs in the second, these injustices would’ve been prevented.

With Suarez, the outrage is focused not on the decision, but on the sanctions. Somehow after Uruguay went on to win their game on penalties, having Suarez sent off and a penalty awarded just did not seem enough. Various pundits, fans and interested bystanders instead would’ve liked to have seen not a penalty, but a goal awarded in situations like this. That way we would be certain cheaters aren’t rewarded.

These calls are understandable, but misguided. Lawyers have a saying: hard cases make bad law and that goes for football as well. Handballs are a dime a dozen, but situations like we saw in Uruguay-Ghana game are incredibly rare. In more normal situations, where a handball might have prevented a goal but the game is far from over anyway, to punish a team with a goal and a sending off is too harsh — a penalty will suffice and is usually succesful anyway. Guaranteed goals also go against the spirit of football in which only actually scored goals count and which doesn’t deal with goals that should have been scored. That’s part of the charm and frustration of football.

The need for more technology I sort of share, but I can also understand why people other than Sepp Blatter disagree with that. Again, the two examples above are so rare and so blatant it’s not that likely they will be repeated often. In fact, technology wasn’t actually needed in either of them, just referees which weren’t halfblind and looking the other way.. For more ordinary, less obvious situations the question is how to integrate this sort of technology in the flow of the game. It’s easy to use video playback to retroactively disallow a goal, but if a referee has disallowed a goal and the game goes on, how do you go from there? Would we really want to make football into a more static game, ala rugby or American football, where coaches can challenge decisions on the field?

Link like it’s 1995

Published on June 22, 2010

It’s hard to imagine these days, but remember back in the nineties when the web started to go mainstream and all sort of not very IT aware companies took their first baby steps on it? Remember how quite a few of those companies just didn’t understand linking and how some of those tried to get their lawyers to forbid socalled deeplinking, wanting to gain control of whoever was linking to them and requiring them to only link to their homepage, rather than “deeplinking” to a specific page on the site? Well, it seems in some remote corner of Belgium it’s still 1995, as the national railways have forbidden links to anything but their welcome page (in dutch).

Specifically, the NMBS doesn’t like it when you link to this page (Dutch), explaining how you can get compensation when your train is delayed. At least one blogger who linked to this page got a cease and desist letter for their troubles (Dutch again). Very likely the NMBS doesn’t have a leg to stand on, but I’m not a lawyer and the chilling effect is bad enough. Even if a blogger could win a lawsuit, the question is whether they could afford one. It’s all deeply silly, symptomatic of a company that doesn’t understand the internet or why they should be doing more with it.

Socialist Unity gets dragged into Toube libel suit

Published on April 6, 20101 Comment

The supposed libel case George Galloway has mounted against David Toube for a comment he left at Socialist Unity has now dragged the latter in:

Many readers will be aware that George Galloway and Kevin Ovenden are each seeking redress from David Toube of Harry’s Place for a libellous comment made by David on this blog back in December.

Last Wednesday I received a letter from Mr Toube’s solicitors saying that should either or both of these libel actions proceed then David Toube will seek to join me as a third-party (part 20) defendant and will seek full indemnity from me in respect of all costs and other liabilities that Mr Toube incurs under the Civil Liability (contribution) Act 1978.

In essence, despite all his huffing and puffing about free speech, David Toube has the chutzpah to publish comments on this blog, and then when faced with the consequences, is seeking to hold me legally responsible for his own actions.

In fact I do consider that the comment made by David T was libellous, and I sought to mitigate that libel by refuting the inaccurate content in subsequent comments on the same thread. This blog does not operate pre-publication moderation, so David Toube’ comment appeared and was read by hundreds of people without any participation whatsoever by the administraors of Socialist Unity blog.

If David Toube’s legal argument is successful, it will mean the end of blogging as we know it, as the burden of responsibility for libel will be shifted to the registered proprietors of blogs, and people posting libellous comments will seek to hide behind the blog owners to avoid legal responsibility.

Unfortunately for Andy, his assumptions here are slightly wrong. The way he puts it, he seems to think that David Toube’s action to drag Socialist Union into this suit is wrong, as if without this action he couldn’t be hold liable for David’s alleged libelous comment. However, this is not true. Had Galloway wanted to, he could’ve held Socialist Unity responsible from the start. Now I’m not a lawyer, so treat the following with all due skepticism.

There’s a semi-famous libel case called Godrey vs Demon Internet 1999 which already gives that chilling effect that Andy worries about. In that case Demon was held responsible for an Usenet post not even posted but propagated through their servers and the judge found that the “common carrier” defence Demon mounted (i.e. you can’t hold the post office responsible for a libelous letter) wasn’t adequate.

Which means that any blog with comments can probably be hold responsible for its commenters already, more so if said blog already screens comments, as Socialist Unity does, as it has banned several commenters for being disruptive (including yours truly). For Andy therefore to think he has no part in this when he led the allegedly libelous comment stand, when he has deleted other comments (including ones for possible libelous intent) and even banned people, is somewhat premature. The idea is that the more you filter, the more you become like a publisher, hence responsible for the content of the comments you allow, whether you agree with them or not. As such, a blog can therefore have a duty of care to remove comments that are held to be libelous at the very least when they are pointed out to them, or face the consequences in court.

At the time the judgement in Godfrey vs Demon 1999 was given there was somewhat of a panic about what this meant in practical terms. Should all Usenet post be pre-vetted, or would Usenet be dropped by internet providers as not worth the trouble? The upshot was that many ISPs started removing posts as soon as they got complaints about them, which is a course also open to blogs. This may have a chilling effect, in that malicious people could complain about reasonable comments then removed by blog owners fearful of costly ligitation, but I’m not sure how much of an effect it has had so far…

Now personally I think Galloway has had some grounds to complaint about David’s original comment, but think he should have complained to Andy/Socialist Unity directly, as David himself couldn’t remove the comment anyway, only ask SU to do so for him. The more so considering the ties Socialist Unity has to Respect and Galloway anyway.

Once again, justice for Jean is denied

Published on December 4, 2008

Jean Charles de Menezes, murdered by police now more than three years ago is once again denied justice, as the coroner in the inquest to his death ruled out a verdict of unlawful killing:

The family of Jean Charles de Menezes walked out of his inquest yesterday as the coroner ruled the jury was forbidden from considering whether he was unlawfully killed.

Sir Michael Wright said he did not believe the testimony justified him allowing them to return a verdict which was tantamount to accusing police officers of murder or manslaughter.

As the De Menezes family and their supporters walked out the coroner said he knew the jury’s hearts would go out to the dead man’s mother, Maria Otone de Menezes. “But these are emotional reactions, ladies and gentlemen, and you are charged with returning a verdict based on evidence,” he said.

And so the establishment once again take care of its own. Can’t embarass the police, especially after they have been so obliging to the government recently. No wonder Craig Murray is furious, especially about this shitty bit of reasoning from “sir” Michael wright:

But he urged caution on judging anything they viewed as lying too harshly. “You must decide whether the person has lied or made an honest mistake. If you can prove that the witness has lied you should bear … in mind people tell lies for a variety of reasons, not necessarily to put their own part.

“Do please excuse the police for not just murdering Jean, but lying about it and covering up their murder almost from the moment his body hit the floor”. Disgusting, but it fits in with how this case has been treated from the start. This has never been about getting justice for Jean, but about exculpating the police for his murder. It’s an old, old pattern in British policing, which has a shameful record of wrongful killings and people dying in its custody and getting away with it. It’s the other side of the same coin that saw antiterrorist police arrest Damien Green MP. Three years ago the government allowed the police their ritual murder to relieve their frustration, last week we saw the police returning the favour through a nicely staged bit of political intimidation.

Both cases sent a message to the British public. In the de Menezes case it’s “we can and will murder you with impunity if we feel like”, in Green’s case it’s “it doesn’t matter how powerful you are, step out of line and we’ll squash you”. With Green, he himself may “only” suffer a humiliating and frightening arrest and questioning, but to everbody with less clout than him this message comes through loud and clear.

Together these two cases are the clearest indication of police state Britain, but they’re just the tip of the iceberg. As Jamie said, talking about the Green case:

People have a crude idea that a police state involves a leader ordering the cops to arrest his enemies. It’s mainly an environment where the police have expanded powers over the general administration of the state which they can exercise with a large degree of autonomy. Their turf gets bigger, and is defended and expanded more aggressively.

Which is exactly what has happened under New Labour. From the very beginning they’ve used the police and the justice system as a political tool, unleashing a torrent of ill-thought out, unworkable policies to curry favour with the tabloids, an equally large torrent of dodgy statistics and press releases to show the succes of these policies, all topped with the occasional potemkin showpiece of serious policing. After September 11 these tendencies only worsened. Remember the tanks at Heathrow the day before Parliament had to vote on the War on Iraq? Long before the British establishment finally noticed last week therefore the police had been politicised and the murder of Jean charles de Menezes as well as the arrest of Damien Green are a logical outcome of this. New Labour flacks may not even been lying when they insist Green’s arrest was the police’s own idea, but the responsibility is still theirs.