The Last Ditch by Tom Paine

2 responses to “Rape Conviction Rates”

1. 

   Dave Petterson

   November 30, 2007

   What we needis a tag on to this for Corruption Conviction rates.
   The number of politicians caught with their hands in the till compared to how many lead to a conviction. that must be a worse ratio than any other crime.

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2. 

   Anon

   December 4, 2007

   For whom do we vote indeed? It strikes me that we no longer live in
   democracies in the meaning that we can elect adequate representation. At
   regular intervals, we are given the option to select which gang of power
   drunk muppets that shall make the bidding for a small group of well
   organised and richly funded special interest lobbies.
   We don’t have any real options since:
   1. The party system is a force in it’s own right that protects and
   provides for it’s own. If you’re a member of the club, you are
   effectively untouchable. Only the established parties have the funding
   and the organisation to launch viable election campaigns, so our choice
   is reduced to which one to pick.
   2. A political, ruling class that regards itself as beyond the law and
   superior to the population in general has emerged. The members of this
   class are not accountable beyond their fellow club members, since they
   are protected by the party system. This breeds complete disregard for
   most constitutional principles. The ruling class does not serve the
   people, it exploits and controls the people from the general belief that
   “free and equal” is a load of revolutionary and dangerous hogwash. If
   non-members of the ruling class were indeed free and equal, they might
   pose a serious threat. Every free and equal citizen is a potential
   terrorist. Only by removing freedom and equality can one remove the
   threat of terrorism.
   In addition to breeding contempt and disregard for civil rights, the
   political class system breeds mediocrity. Great and/or independent minds
   threaten the stability of the group and are thus quickly disposed of.
   3. The lobby system has gotten so well organised and strongly financed
   that, in practice, policies are often influenced and dictated by a small
   group of powerful Special Interest Groups rather than by any concept of
   common good. Thus we are mangled from two sides. Whatever remaining
   common good that might not conflict with the interests of the Political
   Class has a good chance of being sacrificed for the Individual Good of
   an Industry Lobby.
   None of this is new, but the slide down the slippery slope into an
   Orwellian nightmare has been shifted into overdrive. The tragic events
   of 9/11 created the perfect vehicle for disassembling the remains of
   democratic values, checks and balances. Irrational fears are promoted
   and exploited to justify the removal of civil liberties in the interest
   of a successful “War on Terror”.
   Take the example of digital communications. We are told that blanket
   traffic surveillance and data retention is essential to thwart
   terrorism, and thus blatantly un-constitutional legislation is driven
   through virtually without protest.
   Anyone with a modicum of common sense will understand that such
   legislation is completely ineffective to stop, or even identify
   terrorists. Any halfway intelligent terrorist will combine cryptography,
   steganography and “false flag” tactics in his communications. E.g. he
   will hijack an open WLAN, use a false or stolen identity or a
   stolen/cloned mobile phone for his internet connection. Neither he nor
   his location can be determined, not in real time and even less post fact
   (which is why data retention is so absurd). Not only can his identity
   not be found, since the terrorist will use strong encryption, the
   content of his traffic cannot be accessed and read.
   Surely the concept of monitoring and retaining our digital
   communications is in principle no different from monitoring and
   recording everything we say, do and think? No difference in concept,
   only in scope and technology imho.
   The very idea of putting all this information in the hands of the people
   who just lost 25 million personal records is indeed scary. What an
   amazing target for cyber-terrorism. That’s really the summary:
   completely pointless in order to catch terrorists, but a great new
   terrorist target. The analogy would be to build the largest Twin Towers
   ever and fill them with every man, woman and child in the Land. “If
   there’s any terrorists in here, we’ll catch’em…”
   The apparent total lack of collective memory and historic perspective is
   also alarming in this context. “Trust us with ALL your private data.
   After all, we’re the Government so we will never loose, compromise or
   abuse this data – not now and not in the future, because governments
   NEVER change and there is no record in history of abusive and
   totalitarian governments…
   So what is the true agenda behind the extremely costly data surveillance
   and retention policies? What is the real justification for spending our
   tax money in order to remove our Civil Rights and expose us to grave
   risk? A lethal combination of three factors:
   1. The Political Class’ general appetite for control.
   2. The financial interests of the “Copyright Infringement” Lobby.
   3. The financial interests of large “Surveillance Solutions” providers,
   including the Defence Industry, who see major scope for large public
   sector procurement in this area.
   From my observation point, the most decisive and determined thrust is
   coming from the Media Industry. This context truly gets my blood boiling.
   You’re a lawyer. Didn’t there use to be some rationale of
   proportionality between the severity of a crime vs. it’s punishment and
   the resources invested in it’s pursuit? An eye for an eye?
   If we were rational regarding the crime of file sharing/piracy, would we
   not attempt to establish the relative damage of the crime with respect
   to the individual victim and society in general? Would we not balance
   the damages from the crime against the costs of pursuing it? Would we
   not look at the crime in the context of all crimes and our relatively
   limited resources for pursuit?
   Let’s skip the issue of morality and legality and just conclude that it
   is not all that straightforward. If I steal your car, you have one car
   less and I have one car more. Your damage is the value of the car plus
   inconvenience and cost in conjunction with the theft and subsequent
   acquisition of a replacement. The value to me is likely to be less than
   the loss to you since a stolen good usually is encumbered. The macro
   economic effect is thus also negative. If I copy an intellectual good,
   you still have the original. The damage to you depends, among other
   things, on whether I would have been prepared to purchase it or not. It
   is therefore difficult to compute the potential damage to you. It is not
   even obvious that you will suffer any economic damage at all. By using
   your product, I might invest significant time in learning and
   familiarising myself with it instead of a competitive product, thus
   being potentially more likely to purchase it later.
   Since an analysis on the individual level is almost impossible, the next
   scientific level is to take a micro economic perspective, looking at
   allocation of disposable income. Clearly, an individual cannot spend
   more than his disposable income, and an analysis of the damages of
   piracy on the media industry must therefore try to establish to what
   extent piracy leads to re-allocation of disposable income to other
   categories of expenditure. The music industry may be experiencing a
   contracting market place (in the context of new offerings in the same
   expenditure category, such as games, DVD’s, on-line entertainment,
   etc.), but no study has so far been able to establish any reduction in
   overall media consumption as a result of piracy. The few independent
   (non media-industry sponsored) studies that have been undertaken
   indicate that piracy, at current levels, might even have a slight
   positive effect on overall media expenditure. Certainly, the most avid
   file sharers also allocate a larger portion of their disposable income
   to media purchases than the population in general.
   If we accept that disposable income allocation to media expenditure has
   so far not been reduced because of piracy, the macro economic conclusion
   must be that the overall effect on society is positive. At constant
   expenditure, more good is being consumed due to the reproducible nature
   of the good.
   Logical and plausible imho. To summarise:
   1. Individual damage cannot be proven, given the nature of the good.
   2. Micro economic damage to the industry sector has not been
   demonstrated or proven.
   3. Macro economic benefits to society can easily be demonstrated
   scientifically and logically.
   4. The costs for pursuing piracy through traffic surveillance and data
   retention are enormous in pure financial terms an even greater in terms
   of violated civil liberties.
   Presently, available evidence and research appears to indicate that the
   crime of piracy is a largely victimless crime with an overall positive
   macro economic effect on society. I.e. we incur indisputable and
   significant financial and human cost in order to thwart something that
   has not been proven to cause any financial damage, and we violate
   fundamental Civil Rights in order to protect the not even demonstrated
   financial losses from significantly more debatable Intellectual Rights.
   This apparent lack of reason, balance and proportionality concerns me. I
   can see no proportion between the crime and the resources thrown at it.
   Even if one were to agree that piracy is legally and morally wrong, the
   question remains as to HOW wrong it is compared to violation of civil
   rights and favouring an influential minority at the cost of overall
   society? The only proportionality I can see is that between the
   attention to the crime and the influence of the Lobby.
   This is indicative of how the whole system of democracy is failing.
   We the people are supposed to be protected against abusive governments
   by a set of universal Individual Rights, codified as sacrosanct
   constitutional rights. By democratic vote, we can replace an abusive
   government. What do we do when the government does not respect the
   constitution? Who do we vote for when all alternatives display equal
   disregard for us and our Civil Rights?
   What would Paine, Jefferson or Franklin do today?
   They must be rotating in their graves. If we could connect their bodies
   to power generators, we might just have a renewable energy source that
   could solve Global Warming…

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