White House blocks the military’s attempts to rein in abuses by private contractors.
MPAA says it should be allowed to convict filesharers without actually proving they shared any copyrighted files.
Russian town unveils the shittiest monument, ever.
Will we soon have ignition interlock devices on every vehicle?
Katherine Mangu-Ward applies a righteous dressing down to the Washington Post’s David Ignatious over his call for more regulation of the airlines. I’d only add that most of the stuff we like about flying (cheap fares, frequent flier miles) are thanks to market forces, and most of the stuff we hate (TSA screening, sitting on the tarmac waiting for FAA clearance, the rigmarole you have to sit through before beginning each flight) are thanks to federal regulations.
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on Tuesday, June 24th, 2008 at 2:22 pm by Radley Balko
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TheAgitator.com
Creating and maintaining an air traffic control system is one federal regulation I can live with. The others, not so much.
“There is no kitsch or obscenity, it is a successful work of art,” Alexander Kharchenko told The Associated Press. “An enema is almost a symbol of our region.”
That last sentence is a gem.
Regarding the car alcohol detection devices…Excuse me, but did they say passive sampling of the skin when you touch things? I wonder what would happen, then, to all the paranoid moms who constantly rub alcohol-based hand sanitizer all over themselves? Will the same soccer moms supporting MADD now be thwarted in their own efforts to drive by their own mad schemes?
solonix, you may have come up with the only possible good result of this bad idea. Makes me wish you could intentionally tune it to be more sensitive to stupidity…
I’m really, really, really hoping the MPAA is able to get that through… I see a HUGE money-making opportunity when I don’t have to prove that the MPAA is stealing my (self-made) music.
Ignatious deserved the slap for his op-ed, which was quite shallow and not well thought-out at all; thanks to Mangu-Ward for dishing it out.
One correction to Mr. Balko’s comment, however: the vast majority of airport congestion is due to the scheduling practices of the industry, not the govt.
From the Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety article
I first read that as mass intrusion.
Not why anyone is complaining about paying extra for devices that presume you act criminally. Duh, you’re paying for it with money they let you keep in the first place. If you’re going to complain so much surrender what’s left of your assets and leave the country.
How many times is Radley going to use the “shittiest” joke?
Regarding the ignition interlocks, I wonder how that will fly when someone is unable to transport an injured or sick person to the hospital because their car won’t start. Actually, I don’t wonder. I suspect it will just be treated as the price “we” have to pay for safer highways.
I remember when Elizabeth Dole was threatening the states with automatic restraints if states didn’t pass seatbelt laws. Then after the states passed seatbelt laws we went through the automatic restraint phase anyway. Now we’re in the airbag phase and ticketing seatbelt violators has never been more popular.
Laws are never passed to do you good. They’re just passed to do you.
What say you we all sue the MPAA for $149,999.99? Since it’s under $150,000, we wouldn’t have to provide evidence or prove anything (per their rules).
Or we could stop buying their DVDs and choose other entertainment options on Friday/Saturday night.
I’m sure my local bookseller would be quite happy to get the dollars I would have spent at Best Buy.
I would guess that disabling the interlock devices won’t be that hard. I just read up on one of the current interlock devices, and it sounds like you can just disconnect the power. If you’re an interlock user you have to take the thing in for periodic checks with documentation of auto repairs to explain any loss of power to the device.
So if they’re going to mandate their use in all cars they’ll also have to implement an expensive and inconvenient inspection system, or everyone will just disable the fucker. Just what I need… another reason to have to go to the DMV.
Hey Radley, I noticed that you were having trouble locating a Mac-friendly recorder for interviews. About three months ago, I purchased a Zoom H2 (from Amazon, no less) and it has been working like a champ ever since. There is a bit of a learning curve, but for $180, it has crystal-clear quality and transfers files straight to your desktop or iTunes. I recommend also purchasing a larger memory card. Good luck with the panhandle purchasing!
Regarding the MPAA/RIAA novel approach to rules of evidence: So, the RIAA downloads copyrighted music from a P2P server and then uses that as evidence that the P2P host has participated in copyright violation? It seems likely that either 1) they are authorized to make copies of their own music or 2) they are in violation of the law themselves. They aren’t police (e.g. buying drugs is illegal, but cops aren’t prosecuted when they do it to catch drug dealers).
BTW, I am not sympathetic to illegally copying music, but there is still an obligation to prove an actual violation has taken place before enforcing punishment. If the law doesn’t say making it available is the specific crime, then that should not be punished. If the crime is copying, then they should have to prove copying.
So if they’re going to mandate their use in all cars they’ll also have to implement an expensive and inconvenient inspection system, or everyone will just disable the fucker.
As an electronics engineer, I see a lucrative opportunity here.
“Creating and maintaining an air traffic control system is one federal regulation I can live with. The others, not so much.”
And yet Canada has been privatized for 12 years and it’s working fine.
Chain-of-custody issues are a much bigger problem than permission issues. If I make a copy of a cassette tape for a friend because his copy got a little munged, I might reasonably infer, under fair use that:
(1) My friend is authorized to have a copy of the music, and
(2) As such, I am authorized to supply him with one.
Under a reasonable fair-use interpretation, I would be authorized to produce a copy under those narrow circumstances, and my friend would be authorized to receive it.
The situation would be different, however, if I had no reason to believe that my friend already had a copy in any form whatsoever. In that case, I could no longer claim that I had inherited any sort of ‘implicit permission’. Even if my friend happened to have a legal right to the music, I could not claim that I was acting in furtherance of that right if I didn’t know about it.
I wrote a blog yesterday saying almost the EXACT same thing before I had read this just now. I would invite everyone to read it and if you’re a myspace member you can comment on it.
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=51612463&blogID=408568232
http://www.myspace.com/chadpolenz
As regards the alcohol detection system… noticed this on one of the documents on the site for the study that worries me as to just how far they could go with this….
3. Unintended Consequences
– Are there ways in which the device could impact safe
driving attitudes, habits, & behaviors in the future?
In other words: You’re kidding yourself if you think it’s just going to be alcohol detection.
The Wright Amendment. Another wonderful piece of airline regulation.
Lots of places require regular car inspection. That’s enough for politicians to pretend that requiring inspection for tampering with alcohol detectors will be cheap and convenient. Plus, if they’re even slightly inconvenient to get at, 80% of people will just live with them.
Um – 9/11 was brought to us by the airlines that chose NOT to re-inforce cockpit doors after they were warned to do so after a 1997 hijacking in france intended to crash into the eiffel tower. By choosing not to spend $200 per plane they exposed the country to the billions in losses of the 911 attacks. The TSA screening are the result of poor choices by the airlines.
roy – Lots of places require car inspection, but for many it’s only every year. Hell, here in Colorado, you’re exempt for the first 5 years of a new car, and then it’s every two years. If it’s only checked every two years that device is worthless…
Even if you’re right about only 20% disabling the interlock, those 20% are going to be mostly the drunks that were the whole point of the exercise.
bobzbob is right. Even today most of the airlines are refusing to put in cheap secondary barriers that would slow down an attacker in those times when the cockpit door is open (pilot going to the bathroom, etc.). I think United has started doing this, but the others have balked, even though this is a measly 3-4K an airplane. I dislike TSA as much as the next guy, but I simply do not trust the airlines and airports to do the job.
Also, while I agree market forces are usually the best way to make things more efficient, but haven’t the airlines been bailed out and supported by the government for years? Only recently have I heard of major closures, so it really isn’t accurate to say that low fares are a result of the market. If the market were really working, many more airlines would have went out of business a long time ago, and fares would be much higher than they are now.
#22 –
And what’s the first thing Congress did after 9/11?
It indemnified the airlines from any financial liability for their mistakes.
Just yesterday, helping my daughter study the driver’s handbook to get her learner’s permit, I quipped during the “alcohol and the law” questions that by the time she’s my age breathalyzer ignition locks will probably be required on all cars. We laughed, not realizing the feds are trying to make this a reality before she’s even twenty.
Some quaint habit of thought makes it hard to keep up.
Yes congress did. Congress was forced to bail out the private sector after a failure of the market to prevent this disaster. Perhaps congress should have let the industry crash, but they knew that doing so would have far ranging negative impacts on the rest of the economy.
I don’t think you can have the windshield washed on an airliner for $200, but reinforced cockpit doors wouldn’t have prevented 9/11 anyway. The hijackers would have started killing passengers one by one until the pilot opened the door. Now, of course, the pilots wouldn’t open the door, but back then it wouldn’t have occurred to them that the hijackers planned to crash the planes into buildings.
It’s not the airlines responsibility to fend off attacks by the myriad of enemies the U.S. makes with its total inability to leave any part of the world untouched by its incessant bullying and self-serving support for corrupt regimes.
Airlines are commerce. Commerce doesn’t make the world less safe. Governments do that.
Actually, the airline industry is pretty much a creature of the state, top to bottom. The civil aviation infrastructure was created almost entirely at taxpayer expense between the wars, and didn’t attempt even the pretense of paying its own way until the 1970s (it still relies on eminent domain and government-issued bonds). According to Frank Kofsky, the aircraft industry was spiralling into bankruptcy following the post-WWII demobilization, until the Cold War heavy bomber program got it going again. David Noble explained that this was because, absent heavy bomber contracts, the production runs for large civilian jets weren’t long enough to fully utilize the expensive machine tools.
So without government subsidies, if we had an airline industry at all, it would probably be a low capacity system of small 1930s-size craft providing point-to-point service.
Not that that would be a bad thing.